Hardwick Hall
The House that Bess Built
Some things don't change. Just like today's celebrities, Elizabethans who clawed their way to the top, socially and financially, took good care to let the world know all about it with a display of all-out extravagance.
Bess of Hardwick loved display, and she adored extravagance. Discontented with the magnificent mansion she'd already constructed around the house where she was born, Bess abandoned it in favour of building a new and much more impressive Hardwick Hall, a fabulous confection of lacy stonework and huge windows, as ‘in-yer-face' for its era as any footballer's nouveau mansion or rock star's country lair of today.
Hardwick Hall reeks of money and of ego, neither of which were in short supply with Bess. You'll find her initials ‘ES' carved and embroidered everywhere!
From the tapestries and rich hangings she worked on to the inlaid tables and beds she ordered, this Tudor masterpiece of a house was Bess of Hardwick's way of showing everyone just how high she'd managed to climb.
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