The Meet A Family Experience: Chatsworth house

Saturday, November 28, 2014

Nottingham

nottinghamshire, England

Chatsworth house is one of the trips we wanted to make that we just barely managed to squeeze in at the end of the semester. Steve was kind enough to take me and three crazy girls (Megan, Brittany, and Tori) to Chatsworth house. He saved us from a very long and complicated journey via train and offered to drive us instead. Hopefully he enjoyed our company as much as we enjoyed his. If only Val could've come with us, he would've been even more outnumbered! haha

Chatsworth is a beautiful 16th century manor house in Derbyshire England. The house is gorgeous not only on the inside, but is surrounded by beautiful grounds and gardens. The house contains a collection of paintings, furniture, drawings, sculptures, books, and other artifacts.

Probably our main reasoning for visiting the manor was its association with Pride and Prejudice. The house is named in the novel as one of the estates Elizabeth Bennet visits before arriving at Pemberley. The actual manor was used in the movie starring Keira Knightly. Chatsworth house represented Mr. Darcy's home, Pemberley in the film. Side note, we also visited Burghley House, Stamford, and Lincolnshire- (that's where Grantham is) all used as filming locations for the movie! 

Close to Christmas Chatsworth House is always decorated according to a specific theme; this year the theme was Alice in Wonderland. While the decorations were awesome, unfortunately it was slightly crowded. We also didn't get to see all of the rooms as some were blocked off when we went. What was slightly depressing is that there was a bust of Mr. Darcy in one of the rooms, and we completely missed it- it was there but we didn't see it. :(

We did, however get to enjoy the gardens, despite a slight drizzle that threatened to shorten our visit. We walked around the immense gardens for quite a while since there was so much to see. 

We took a short break for lunch before we left to visit the little town of Bakewell. Steve took us to Bakewell and told us we HAD to try a Bakewell pudding, and we of course took one back to Val as well. Bakewell was a cute little town, but we didn't stay long because the rain came in strong so we decided to leave.

On the way back we ran into terrible traffic, but we did eventually make it back to Steve and Val's for a delicious dinner of Cottage Pie and Apple and blackberry crumble with custard!