Author: Sandra Costello

Orders of the day, Volume 32, Issue 7, Feb/Mar 2001

Set high above the MI 6 miles east of Chesterfield, Bolsover Castle catches the eye, especially when floodlit at night. Now owned by English Heritage, conservation work has revived its splendour after a period of major decline and revealed some of the most intact surviving interiors of the 17th century in the country. A remarkable feature is that its unique buildings have been relatively little changed since they were built. King Charles I was treated here to one of the most extravagant entertainments of the time in 1634.

Bolsover Castle was granted by Edward VI in 1553 to George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who later married the famous Bess of Hardwick. When he died in 1590 his son Gilbert sold the ruins of the castle in 1608 to his step-brother Charles Cavendish, a son of Bess’s by the second of her four marriages, who set about restoring Bolsover. Charles died in 1617, only four years after the work was begun. After this, it served as one of the country homes of his son William until his death in 1676. In 1618 William married Elizabeth Basset, who died in 1643 while he was away fighting in the Civil War. In 1645 he met Margaret, his second wife, in Paris at the exiled court of Queen Henrietta Maria. William disliked the time needed to manage his estates, and spent his time rather in music, poetry, architecture, swordsmanship and ‘principally horese of all sorts, but more particularly horese of manage’. He was also known as a great philanderer.

William was a key Royalist leader in the Civil War as commander of the troops north of the Trent. Unfortunately he is notorious for losing the north of England for the King in the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, following which he fled to the Continent to escape the Parliamentarian army.

In 1645 the Parliamentarians moved in on Bolsover Castle and began work on gun emplacements ready for bombardment. They were stopped before any damage was done by the ‘coming of a Drum from the Castle for a Parley which concluded the Articles of Surrender’. The ‘Governour, Officers and Gentlemen’ were allowed to march out ‘with Drums and Colours, Horses, Swords and Pistols’, but all their heavy guns and ammunition were taken.

The castle proved a drain on the resources of the Parliamentary army and in 1649 orders were given to demolish it. The house however was not to be damaged, but the ‘outworks abroad, and garden walls, with the turrets and walls of the frontier court that are of strength, be demolished, and all the doores of the house be taken away and slight ones set in their place’. The castle was sold to a speculator. William couldn’t return to England unless he ‘compounded’, or apologised to the government for his role in the Civil War, which he wouldn’t do. His brother Charles however did so, paying a fine as punishment, then bought back the family estates for William’s children.

With the Restoration in 1660 William returned to England. He had hoped to be rewarded for his loyalty to the Royalist cause, but was to be disappointed. He was never quite able to shake off the disaster of Marston Moor, his reputation for retiring to ‘sweet company’ instead of running his army, or of going abroad instead of rallying his men. Unable to afford a good house in London, he was forced to return to Welbeck, his main home, and the ‘naked house’ at Bolsover. However Charles II was not completely ungrateful and in 1665 William was granted the new rank of Duke. He set to work to restore Bolsover; new lead was bought for the gallery roof and repairs carried out. A whole new suite of state rooms was built and the Riding House range was repaired.

William died in 1676. His dukedom died with his son Henry in 1691 and the Castle passed through the female line in the 18th century to the Dukes of Portland. During the 18th century Bolsover was plundered for building materials to be used at Welbeck, including the lead roof from the Terrace Range. In 1852 a great sale, lasting 10 days, saw the disposal of many of the contents, though much was transferred to nearby Welbeck. In 1828 the Vicar of Bolsover moved into the Little Castle, finding it ’the most dismal desolation’, and set about converting it into a Victorian country house. During the First World War the gallery of the Terrace Range was used as a rifle range for soldiers training for the front. In 1945 Bolsover was given to the nation by the Dukes of Portland.

You enter via the grassy Outer Court, and pass into the Great Court with its enormous copper beech. Completely enclosing the south side of the Great Court is the Riding House Range, built in the 1630s for William Cavendish’s horses. It consists of the forge area, the Riding House and stable, and has a splendid stone doorway. The interior, with its floor of soft sand, is the finest surviving example in England of this rare type of building.

The building of the Terrace Range - a long sequence of imposing state rooms along the west side of the Great Court - was a result of William Cavendish’s ambition to be made the King’s Master of the Horse. He needed a grand house to support such a position, and to which he could invite the King and Queen. The Terrace Range was completed in the 1660s when William returned from exile abroad after the Civil Wars to a neglected Bolsover. Its state rooms provided the stateliness needed for the increasingly formal aristocratic lifestyle of the late 17th century. Unfortunately this range is now a ruin, though many of the walls are intact, if roofless. They lead out onto the long west front, one of Bolsover’s most remarkable features, with an expansive vista across the motorway and countryside to Hardwick Hall; below the castle is a coal mine and miners’ cottages. Coal was worked here in William Cavendish’s time and later in deep mines as the area became industrialised.

This is the oldest and most unusual of the buildings at Bolsover. It was begun in 1612, designed as a fantasy house for leisure and lavish entertaining. “To enter this building is to leave the everyday behind, and to enter a new world where everything has a hidden meaning.” Built on the site of a fortified 12th century keep, in spite of its fanciful arrow-loops, turrets and battlements it was intended for pleasure, not defence.

On the ground floor are the Anteroom, with semicircular paintings illustrating three of the four Humours, then the Hall, its vaulted ceiling supported by stone pillars and with dramatic wall paintings. Also on this floor is the Pillar Parlour, its lavish decoration a striking example of early 17th century taste, with panelling and grained and gilded decoration. It was used for banquets and entertainments.

The fireplaces of the Little Castle are one of its most unusual and attractive features. Each is different, but of the same style; all have great, stone-panelled hoods, with Gothic arches and extravagant classically-inspired ornament. Many are carved in a variety of local English ‘marbles’ - pink alabaster, speckled cockleshell and black ‘touch’. A few of the black ‘jewels’ which adorn the fireplaces were missing, but have been replaced as part of the recent conservation programme, after tracking down the source of the Ashford black ‘marble’ to a mine on the nearby Chatsworth estate and reopening it for this purpose.

Upstairs is the lavishly-decorated Star Chamber, with its superb light blue ceiling decorated with plaster work and gilded stars. There are panel paintings of Old and New Testament figures, and another splendid fireplace. Next door is the Marble Closet, a small but luxurious room, decorated with somewhat risque paintings. When the Castle fell to the Parliamentarians in 1645 this room was used by the wife of one of the soldiers as ‘a spinning-room for toe and wooll’.

The Bedchamber, now bare, has panelled walls. Two closets lead from it, each with a very different decoration theme. One shows stories from Christ’s life, the other pagan gods and goddesses. These paintings, like those downstairs, are largely original, and their remarkable survival makes them some of the most significant wall paintings of their date in the country. The decoration in the ‘Heaven’ closet may be the earliest example of 17th century chinoiserie, while the ceiling of the ‘Elysium’ closet is apparently copied from the French palace of Fontainebleau. The oak panelling has never been restored and retains traces of the original decorative scheme which was elaborate and costly, though now very faded and worn.

The second floor has an unusual octagonal lantern providing light to the central area. Leading off are various rooms, all bare but with superb views. Below is the basement, consisting of kitchens, sculleries, a wine cellar and a bakehouse; the bakery still contains its ovens and there are several stone sinks.

Outside is the walled garden, with a deeply-set fountain in the grassed area. It combines the medieval concept of an enclosed, secret place with the Renaissance idea of a garden as a place to display statues.