What's on in Derbyshire

Chatsworth

12 Mar - 23 Dec 2008 (annual)

Cost: Various (depending on what you see)

Hours: House 11am-5.30pm (last admission 4.30pm)
Garden 11am-6pm (last admission 5pm)

Chatsworth, stately home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, is also known as the "Palace of the Peak". In addition to art treasures, it has a beautiful 105-acre garden and a working farmyard which is great fun for kids.

Chatsworth is considered to be Derbyshire's most important historic house and has been called the "National Gallery of the North" by the Times newspaper.

All three floors of the house are open to the public and feature works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Lucien Freud and Gainsborough, in addition to curiosities including a trompe l'oeil painting of a violin hanging on a door, a Rolls Royce jet engine and a giant ancient Greek marble foot. Treasures are displayed in the grand state apartments, which have ornate painted ceilings, in the 19th-century library and in the great dining room.

The garden has a maze, a rose garden, cottage and kitchen gardens and five miles of walks filled with rare trees, shrubs, fountains and ponds. Water pours down the first Duke's cascade and shoots from the branches of the willow tree fountain (aka the "squirting tree"!). The gardens are a treat at any time of year, but especially at Christmas when they are floodlit and there are carol concerts at weekends. Although there is a charge to enter the garden, the park is open free all year round and stretches for 100 acres along the banks of the Derwent River.

Kids have a ball at Chatsworth as they can tumble around the wooden adventure playground and meet the chickens, geese, pigs, cows and sheep in the working farmyard. There are also water play areas and a sandpit, a cafe and a maze.

Chatsworth House

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