Someone should write a musical about Bess of Hardwick, the Elizabethan aristocrat who got fabulously rich through her astute dealings in mining, glass-working and husbands. She outlived four of the latter, men who themselves had acquired great wealth through, among other things, robbing dissolved monasteries. She also had built, in her old age, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, which should be on the bucket list of anyone with any interest in architecture. I finally got there last week, after speaking at the Buxton International Festival in the same county.
Nothing can prepare you for the impact of the building, which is a fraction of the effect it would once have had. It is a fearless and fragile hilltop castle, celebrated for its profligate use of glass and for the ornate tapestries on the inside walls, both of them bogglingly expensive at the time. The two together, when abundant daylight lit up the fresh colours of the fabric, would have made the building dazzle. The big windows would have made the Pennine crags and dales, seen from the grand rooms at the top of the house, feel like your personal property, which in Bess’s case was at least partly the case. Now the tapestries are pale and to stop them fading further the windows are shrouded, but with a little imagination you can make out a basic truth, that the past is neverendingly radical and strange.
