Dorothy Vernon’s Door: Interior.
On the south side of this noble apartment is a charming central recessed window of large size, 15 feet by 12 feet—large enough, in fact, to accommodate a goodly party around the fine old central table, which still remains—and two smaller recessed, or bay, windows. On the north side are two windows looking into the upper court-yard; the east end is entirely taken up by a strongly stone-mullioned window of twenty-four lights, with a side window on each side. In the recessed windows are the royal arms of England, and the arms of Vernon, Manners, Talbot, &c., in stained glass. Our engraving shows about one-half, in length, of this noble room.
Opposite to the central recess is a fire-place, which still holds the original fire-dogs rising from goats’ feet, and decorated with human heads and heads of goats. In the centre of the large window at the end will be observed a glass case, containing a cast of the head of Lady Grace Manners, whose monument is in Bakewell Church. She was the daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepoint, and wife of Sir George Manners, of Haddon, the eldest son and heir of Sir John Manners and Dorothy Vernon his wife. Lady Grace “bore to him (her husband) four sons and five daughters, and lived with him in holy wedlock thirty years. She caused him to be buried with his forefathers, and then placed this monument (at Bakewell) at her own expense, as a perpetual memorial of their conjugal faith, and she joined the figure of his body with hers, having vowed their ashes and bones should be laid together.”
Dorothy Vernon’s Door: Exterior.
From near the upper end of this Long Gallery, or Ball-room, a highly enriched doorway opens into the Ante-room, or Lord’s Parlour.
The Ante-room, now occasionally called the “Lord’s Parlour,” and, two centuries ago, was designated the “Orange Parlour,” is a small room, hung with paintings, and having around the upper part of its walls a cornice embellished with the crests of the Vernon and Manners families. The interest, however, attached to this apartment rests in the strongly barred door which opens from it on to a flight of stone steps leading down to the terrace and winter-garden. This doorway, known far and wide as Dorothy Vernon’s Door, we have engraved, both as seen from its exterior side and its interior side, and have also given the “initial” illustration on page 221.
It is said, and no doubt with truth, that it was through this doorway and down these steps that the lovely Dorothy Vernon, one of the co-heiresses of that grand old family, passed on the night of her elopement, and that at the top of the opposite flight of steps, shown in our ground plan, and known as “Dorothy Vernon’s Steps,” she was received into the arms of her ardent and true lover, John Manners, who had horses in waiting; and that they flew through the woods and fields until they gained the high road, and made their way into the neighbouring county. It was through this doorway then that not only the lovely Dorothy passed, but with her the fine old mansion itself and all its broad lands, into the hands of the noble family now owning it.
Very sweetly has the tradition of the love and elopement of this noble pair been worked up by imagination in a story, “The Love-steps of Dorothy Vernon,” by a popular writer in the “Reliquary;” and thus another modern author very pleasantly embodies it in verse:—