A Tour of Chatsworth House - VII

A detail of the reredos in The Chapel

I spent less than 10 minutes in the Chapel Passage to take 20 general record photographs of a few of the things that caught my eye. With more time and space available to me, I could probably spend a good part of an hour there and I can easily imagine coming back here again with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group. 

The reredos

The next room that I visited during my tour of Chatsworth House was the Chapel, which according to Pevsner is "the finest room in Chatsworth”. It is dominated by the magnificent two storey alabaster reredos, with its Ashford Black Marble columns, which was carved by Samuel Watson to a design by Caius Gabriel Cibber. 

'Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain'

The Geology of Chatsworth House, by Ian Thomas and Mick Cooper, states that the alabaster for the altarpiece itself was from Gotham, in Nottinghamshire, but the remainder was obtained from the family estate at Tutbury in Staffordshire - reputedly from the Castle Hayes Mine adjacent to the site of the Fauld munitions explosion. 

An Ashford Black Marble column

The Ashford Black Marble columns, which are 3 m high and 350 mm in diameter, were turned from single monolithic blocks of limestone from Sheldon Moor and are believed to be another example of the work of Samuel Watson. 

'Sicilian' marble and serpentinite

Looking down at the floor, two marbles have been used: the white variety with pale grey veins is probably the ‘Sicilian' variety of Carrara marble, from the Apuan Alps, and the green/brown stone forming wide bands is a serpentinite, which again is likely to be from Italy. A closer examination reveals that in places the serpentinite is deteriorating, with softer veins being preferentially worn away and the occasional repair with stone indents being needed. 

A detail of serpentinite flooring

At the time of my visit, Damien Hirst’s eight-foot tall bronze sculpture ‘Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain’ was on display within the altarpiece and set on the floor was what looked like a large illuminated object that has the appearance of the mineral fluorite. I didn't get near enough to touch it and couldn't see any information about it and so it remains a mystery.

An object on the floor of The Chapel