The Stately Homes of England

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt; S. C. Hall

One of these tapestried rooms is named in an old list of apartments of 1666 as “Lady Dorothy’s Chamber,” and a neighbouring apartment is called “Lady Cranborne’s Chamber.” A third tapestried apartment was called “Roger Manners’ Room.” All these rooms are on the central portion of the northern side of the Hall, over the kitchen and adjoining rooms. The apartment over the buttery was the “Great Nursery.”

Most of the rooms on this side of the building have evidently been intended for sleeping apartments; and there is a staircase with ornamental rails, on which remains of the original gilding still serve as a relief to the sombre colour of the oak.

One of the most charming “bits” on this side is a short Wooden Gallery, here engraved, with oak balustrades, which leads across a tiny little open court from one of the tapestried apartments to another, and on the walls of which mosses and lichens grow in luxuriance. It is just the spot, opening from the heated rooms, for a lounge in the pure air; and no doubt from this gallery Dorothy Vernon, and many another high-bred dame, has looked up to the stars overhead while passing from room to room, on a festive night, as well as on many a quiet evening.

Room over the Entrance Gateway.

Among the apartments not usually shown are also two handsome wainscoted rooms, with carved ceilings, situated over each other, in the entrance gateway tower. Above the uppermost of these is a room supposed to have been a place of confinement, because there are traces of external bolts and bars. It has two windows, in one of which are two massive stone seats inserted in the wall. It has also a door leading out to the leads.

Most of the points of interest have now been described; but the curious rambler, who may choose to linger and pry into nooks and corners, will do well to visit some of the basement rooms—as that on the left-hand side under the Eagle or Peverel Tower—an arched warder’s room, where he will note the thickness of the walls (7 feet); the next room westward, which seems to have been the earlier kitchen and bakehouse; the room under the State Bed-room, used in later times as a gymnasium for the family; the Armoury, which is under that portion of the Long Gallery with the deep projecting recess; and the rooms under the Long Gallery nearer the Dining-room, where the splay of the windows is nearly 9 feet, and which seem to have been used as washing-houses. Also the so-called Aviary, which opens toward the garden, under the Earl’s Bed-room and adjoining rooms; and of the rooms yet unmentioned on the west side of the lower courts, suffice it to say, that on the ground floor, next to the so-called Chaplain’s Room, were two waiting-rooms; and then the Steward’s Room, next to the chapel entrance; over this entrance the Steward’s Bed-room, approached by a spiral staircase near the belfry tower from a closet in which access is gained to the leads; and after passing the clerestory windows of the chapel, there is an angle commanding a good view of the lower court. Then on this first floor are a bed-room, the “Barmaster’s Room;” the real Chaplain’s Room, in which is now a collection of bones; a small room still used by the duke for private papers; and another bed-room, which brings us back to the entrance gateway.

But enough has been said of the interior of Haddon to satisfy the wants of the tourist, and, although we could linger for hours over the various rooms not yet specifically described, and fill several chapters with their description, we must reluctantly leave them, and pass on into the grounds, and so make our way to Bakewell, to show the visitor the last resting-places of the noble families to whom Haddon has belonged.

Leaving, then, by a small doorway at the end of a passage leading out from the Banqueting-Hall, and passing the Dining-room on the right, the visitor will enter what is called the “Upper Garden.” To his right he will see below him, on looking over the strongly-buttressed wall—one of the oldest parts of the building—the “Lower Garden,” roughly terraced down the hill side, and to his right a gravelled path leads by the side of the building to the wall of the chapel, where, by a long flight of sixty-seven steps, it descends to the old foot-bridge—one of the prettiest objects in the grounds: this we have engraved.

To his left, the “Upper Garden,” 120 feet square, is a lawn; up its centre, as well as around it, runs a broad gravel walk, opposite to which rises a splendid wide flight of stone steps, with stone balustrades, leading to the Terrace and Winter Garden. Along the sides of this garden are beds partitioned off by hedges, or as they may more appropriately be called, walls of yew and box.