A visit to Chatsworth

Rebecca and I decided to celebrate the end of term with a day trip to the vast estate of Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. I was looking one night at a map of Britain and came across this estate and, after looking it up, discovered that it was the façade of Pemberley in the Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley. And the movie The Duchess, based on the life of the Duchess of Devonshire, was also filmed there, since it was her actual home. I looked it up online and saw that it was gorgeous. I told Rebecca, and we decided that we had to go. It turned out that we would have to journey to London to get a train to Chesterfield, a town near to Chatsworth, to get there. We ended up spending hours studying train and bus schedules to find out if this trip was even possible, but we managed and bought train tickets from London to Chesterfield online as well as entrance to Chatsworth to get the online discount.
To maximize our time there, we had to leave Egham as early as possible, which meant the 5:57 am train to London Waterloo. To prepare ourselves for this epic journey, we went to bed early on Friday night (well, at least we tried: I had insomnia and Rebecca’s flatmates decided to party). That morning, I was up by 4:30 am, Rebecca came over at 5 to make a hearty breakfast, and we were out the door a little after 5:30. We had to take the long route to the train station because the back gate isn’t open that early. So we arrived at the train station and bought our tickets at about 5:56. At least we were out on the platform by then. As were doing this, a train roared by without stopping. We didn’t think anything of this until the expected 5:57 train didn’t appear. The screen said that the next train would arrive at 6:23. Panic. We had no option but to wait. It was so frustrating to think that we could miss our train due to something that wasn’t our fault! If we missed it, would lose all of that money that we spent. We decided that we could only do our best to get there as fast as possible once the train arrived.
As soon as the doors opened in Waterloo, we booked it. We literally ran through the station, down to the Tube, and down to the Northern Line. Fortunately, Rebecca spotted a short-cut using the Piccadilly Line from Leicester Square. At this point in time, I really didn’t think that we were going to make it. We still had to print off our train tickets from King’s Cross, which is across the street from St. Pancras, where our train was leaving from. But I tried not to think about it as we rushed off of the Piccadilly Line and out into King’s Cross Station. We printed off the tickets and ran to St. Pancras, stopping only for the traffic light (and my lack of endurance somewhere in the middle St. Pancras). We finally arrived at the screen listing the trains. As I labored for breath, Rebecca exclaimed, “Sarah, the platform hasn’t even been assigned yet! We made it!” It was true: minutes later, the train was assigned to the platform right in front of us. The impatient ticket lady (almost) barely fazed us as we made our triumphant way to our carriage and assigned seats. High-fives were definitely in order.
About two hours later we arrived in Chesterfield in Derbyshire (Mr. Darcy country for the initiated). We navigated to the bus stops almost painlessly (there was some epic crossings of streets at a giant roundabout trying to find a street). We were happy to find an earlier bus to take us to Baslow, one of the towns close to the house. The drive was incredible. We were now in the Peak District. There were not peaks that I could see, strictly speaking, but there were pretty, green hills with the typical piled-stone walls. Most of my public transportation trips have occurred in cities! The bus driver was one of the nicest that I’ve met so far and he even made sure that we were where we wanted to end up.
We easily found directions from the stop to the house. We knew that we’d have to walk a distance to get there. It was such a pretty walk! There is an extensive park around Chatsworth as well as a National Park in the area. There were sheep in the park, so we were able to get relatively close pictures, considering that they ran away from us. Finally we arrived at the house. It was bigger than I anticipated. Unfortunately, it was undergoing restoration, like everything else in England, so there was stark white plastic covering the left half of the house and the inside courtyard. Our tickets covered the house and the gardens; we decided to start with the house.
We collected our tickets, bought the audio tour, and began. The house was absolutely gorgeous. Dim lights created a somber atmosphere and the decorations gave a sense of layers upon layers of richness and the long history of the house. I could talk everything I saw, but that would make this post even longer. A few highlights then: wall hangings of stamped leather (looked like wallpaper!) in elaborate patterns in the music room, painted ceilings depicting classical scenes, elaborate wood carving. And I learned more about Georgiana, the historical Duchess of Devonshire, herself. I hadn’t realized how influential she was in her day: she was the leader of fashion, began the style of elaborate headdresses with flowers and feathers, was personal friends with Marie Antoinette, actively supported the Tory party, and even hosted some of the most influential politicians at Chatsworth. Pardon my history side note; I’ve encountered her as a character in historical fiction, so I thought that this was interesting. Memorabilia from the movies had been placed in a specific section upstairs. Some the sculptures in the gallery were in Pride and Prejudice as well.
It rained off and on as we exited the house and walked through the gardens. But was mostly had overcast weather for the rest of the day. The gardens were redone by “Capability” Brown, one of the leaders of landscape of his day. There was a hedge maze!
Classical statues were at almost every turn. One of the most impressive areas was the Stone Garden, which consisted of large boulders piled in groups with paths running through them as well as a waterfall. Near the top was a view point looking out on to the Derbyshire countryside.
On a different note, we found headstones for the family pets of the current Duke and Duchess. I thought that it gave a very personal aspect of them.
We ended our time by stopping for warm Cornish pasties in a small shop by the house. This was my first Cornish pasty, and it was really good! I haven’t mentioned the temperature yet. It was so cold that I had a hard time moving my hands properly: I couldn’t full open my hand to give change to the lady at the till. This is why warm pasties appealed to us. She showed us to an information room with seats where we could eat in the warmth.
We had over three hours until we arrived back in Egham. Once we arrived back in London, we discovered that we had used all of the money on our Oyster cards. We realized that we were that close to not having enough earlier that morning. We might have had enough time to top up our cards, but it might have pushed us over the edge due the stress we were under at that point. And there could have been a long line at the top-up machine, or enough could have been broken to have delayed us getting to the platform. Who knows? So I’ve come to the conclusion that God allows those panic moments and stress situations to happen and then builds in little moments of relief or even grace. Even though the 5:57 train didn’t arrive or stop for whatever reason, God allowed us to have an amazing time in Derbyshire and to have enough Oyster money in London Waterloo. A mundane blessing, yes, but just as meaningful and practical. :)