HARDWICK HALL DERBYSHIRE

There’s no doubt who built Hardwick Hall – Bess of Hardwick’s initials are everywhere. Bess rose from modest beginnings to bury four husbands and become the richest woman in England after Elizabeth I.

Her first marriage to Robert Barlow, who was only 13, was probably still unconsummated when he died the next year. Then came the much older Sir William Cavendish who had accrued a fortune from the dissolution of the monasteries. Bess persuaded him to buy the Chatsworth estate in her home county of Derbyshire, but he died in 1557 leaving her with six children.

Husband number three was

William St Loe, who doted on Bess and left her one of the wealthiest women in England with an annual income equivalent to £19 million today. And then came marriage to the Earl of Shrewsbury, which made Bess a Countess. But there were three people in this marriage because Shrewsbury was made custodian of Mary Queen of Scots, who was under house arrest in his charge for 15 years. After years of quarrels and rancour – it was rumoured that Shrewsbury and the Queen of Scots were lovers – Bess moved back to the old manor house at Hardwick, her childhood home, and started building. Before she had finished Hardwick Old Hall, her husband died – leaving her richer still – and before he was cold in his grave she was digging the foundations of Hardwick New Hall (above) – a house to rival any royal palace. There were so many windows that local people coined the ditty ‘Hardwick Hall – more glass than wall.’