We are very comfortably situated at the Chatsworth Hunting Tower, and have had a marvellous few days visiting Haddon Hall, Hardwick Hall and the exhibit at Chatsworth itself, House Style, Five Centuries of Fashion.  More to come on all of these adventures!

The Teddies and Penny have recovered from their jet lag and are comfortably ensconced in the Hunting Tower sitting room.

Glenn is equally comfortably situated. The kitchen is amazingly well equipped and we’ve enjoyed several meals in since our arrival: Leg of lamb with steamed new potatoes, green beans and sugar snap peas one night, followed by stuffed pork loin (with crackling!), roast potatoes and spinach the next – everything from the Chatsworth Farm Shop.  Oh my, the food has been absolutely delicious, and incredibly reasonable. The meat for each night was under $10. I don’t know what makes the difference, but the crackling on the pork crisped up in under 20 minutes. And it was fantastic! At home, when our butcher is persuaded (most reluctantly) to provide it, it comes strapped onto the roast like a foreign substance and takes forever to do its thing. I frequently have to remove it from the roast and then put it in a super-hot oven for half an hour to crisp up. NOT the same…

But back to the Tower itself. This is the view from the front door.

The Tower comes with its own cannons! Three of them. 

The Tower is located 400 ft above Chatsworth and was originally built to allow “the ladies” to observe their better halves hunting over the property.

 

The Hunting Tower living space is spread over four floors. The front door leads into the kitchen, which includes a dishwasher, combination washer/dryer and a wonderful electric fire in the cast-iron stove in the fireplace alcove.

On the kitchen wall we discovered that we have had illustrious company in staying here:

Well, well!  Who knew?

The next floor is the sitting room, done in beautiful burgundies and golds. There is only one catch. Yes, the staircase. The Tower was built in the 1580s, and the stone staircase to get from floor to floor is original. It’s not for the faint of heart, believe me. Particularly going down…

However, one gets used to it 🙂 Just don’t try wandering upstairs whilst balancing a cup of coffee and a scone on a plate… We’ve been much more diligent about eating at the table!

They’ve made excellent use of the space, and each floor has a desk or dressing table tucked into one of the alcoves.

It’s very, very comfortable.

  The master bedroom is on the top floor.

I’m particularly enamoured with the dressing table tucked into the circular alcove. Perfect for “putting on one’s face”. 

The wardrobe is very generously sized. No, we did not carry the suitcases up the stairs. Fortunately, we use packing cubes, (world’s greatest invention!) so I left the suitcases on the bottom floor and we just trundled the packing cubes up. We took the hanging stuff on a separate trip. 

The four-poster bed is extremely comfortable. 

The very bottom floor is another bedroom, with twin beds. Both the bedroom floors have ensuite washrooms with showers.

We’ve made the most of our time here, wandering the gardens and taking pictures. The weather has been surprisingly good for the Midlands, and we’ve been very appreciative.

The house is undergoing extensive maintenance in the North Wing at present. It’s the last bit of a multi-million pound, 10-year restoration project.

They’re cleaning the stone and doing some repairs to the foundations, by the look of it. It’s no doubt an ongoing battle, a house of this size and this age.  But it’s still absolutely spectacular.

The night we arrived the sun was glinting from the gold around the windows – a sight you don’t often get to see, as it was warm and sunny.

The sheep were being summoned to another pasture, or into a barn for the night. It was quite a sight!

We walked a bit through the gardens and visited the fountain.

And discovered a new dog statue, installed since our last visit.  Makes us miss our guys…

But the most welcome surprise was the Champagne Bar in the garden. Any place that serves Laurent-Perrier rose´champagne while you’re walking about the garden is ok in my books…

More on our adventures in Derbyshire future blogs. Sneak peek:  The Dowager Duchess’s collection of Insect Jewellery, Fashions and the Dining Room at Chatsworth. There is a lot to come – way too much for one blog!

Tomorrow we leave for Kent, where we are staying in a self-catering cottage on the grounds of Leeds Castle. It made sense to us to do two back-to-back self-catering accommodations as we could transfer groceries, etc. (for etc. read Scotch and wine), between locations, without waste!  I’m not sure about the internet situation there, so it may be some time before I can give an update on our travels, but I’ll see what we can manage.

Thanks for visiting. 

I’m this sharing this post with Between Naps on the Porch.