For centuries the estate has been in the Stanhope family, created Earls of Harrington in 1742, and is placed amid very beautiful gardens, greatly improved about the middle of last century by Charles, fourth Earl, who married Maria Foote, the actress, and wrought many wonderful things here; forming that lake which the great Duke of Wellington declared to be the only natural artificial sheet of water he had ever seen. The place looks strangely romantic and wild.
An astonishing story is told of an ancestress of the Earl of Harrington. A Stanhope of olden times died young, and his widow, like those other brilliant Royalist dames at Corfe Castle and Brampton Bryan, held Elvaston during a siege by the Parliamentary forces in 1643, commanded by Sir John Gell. In the end, the besiegers wore out the little defending band at Elvaston, and Sir John Gell, after the manner of the conquering heroes of that time, did what havoc he could about the place. He made a woeful wreck of the beautiful garden, demolished a magnificent monument Lady Stanhope had erected to the memory of her husband, and at last—insisted upon her marrying him! She naturally refused so preposterous an idea—and then quite as naturally agreed to wed this terrific wooer, who literally had stormed his way to her heart. He was very masculine: there can be no doubt whatever of his gender; and if it be true that, above all things, a woman loves a manly man, she had, in Sir John Gell, an ideal mate, for, as the poet says:
’Tis not so much the lover who woos,
As the lover’s way of wooing;
and what a way this Roundhead knight had with him!
But Derby town is advancing upon Elvaston, and will shortly be upon it, and the place is in consequence not being maintained in its old style. Some day, possibly, the Midland Railway may come and cut it up. Already it has abolished Osmaston Hall, and made the rest of the way into Derby a grimy, smoke-laden purlieu.
ELVASTON CASTLE.