A Tour of Chatsworth House - XVI

The Rock Garden

As a geologist, my tour of Chatsworth House proved very productive, having seen many examples of decorative stone that were quarried from its estate, a wide variety of marbles and granites from around the Mediterranean and extensive use of local gritstone.

Entering the Rock garden from the Maze

Over the years, I have seen many large outcrops of Chatsworth Grit along the famous gritstone edges that rise up to the east of the River Derwent in the Peak District National Park and I know its physical characteristics very well. 

A general view

Walking from the Grotto down the hill towards the house, on the last leg of my exploration of Chatsworth House, I walked through the Maze and was completely taken aback by the scale of the Rock Garden. The largest construction, the Wellington Rock, is nearly 14m high and has a waterfall running down it. 

The fountain on the Wellington Rock

The Rock Garden was built as a reminder of a visit to the Alps, which formed just one part of a Grand Tour of Europe that the 6th Duke of Devonshire undertook with Joseph Paxton. These were becoming increasingly fashionable in the mid-19th century, but few were conceived on such a massive scale as this. 

A geological map of the area around Chatsworth House

The work began in 1842, with stone being brought down from Dobb Edge, north of Stand Wood and perfectly positioned around the garden using large steam-powered apparatus designed by Paxton himself. Given that the large blocks were also brought from nearly 2 km away, across rough and steeply sloping terrain, this is quite a feat. 

A rock stack made of shaped blocks

Sometimes, the stacks are built in roughly squared blocks of rock, with beds of mortar being clearly evident, but others have been carefully built to look like the original natural rock feature as closely as possible. 

Reproduced bedding planes

To this effect, ‘bedding planes’ have been cut into massive sandstone with hand tools, to reproduce the appearance of graded bedding and large scale cross-bedding, which are characteristic features of the Chatsworth Grit. 

The Strid

The garden also contains a large water feature called the Strid, based on a chasm of the same name, which is cut by the River Wharfe on the Duke’s Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire. Although the garden has been redesigned in recent years, the surrounding rocks were planted with wild currants, bilberries and other plants brought from Bolton Abbey. 

The Rock Garden

It was now 16:30 and I had less than a half hour left before I caught my bus back to Sheffield. I could easily have stopped to have another coffee but, with spells of sunshine to take advantage of, I had a quick walk around the Canal Pond to take photos of the south elevation of the house.

The south elevation of Chatsworth House