Chatsworth

Fit For a Duke

Chatsworth was almost carried off by death duties.

Money troubles throughout the 20th century threatened the very fabric of this vast house and its thousands of acres of land. Fortunately for the Devonshire family, who occupy part of the house, and the thousands of visitors every year who ogle the rest of the property, Chatsworth remains indisputably one of England's great country houses.

Two names - Devonshire and Cavendish - have been most closely associated with the house historically, which was built by a woman, Bess of Hardwick. She also takes credit for its Derbyshire location.

Bess was the second wife of Sir William Cavendish (1505-57), who abandoned his Suffolk home and moved to his bride's neck of the woods to the north.

Bess inherited £34 on the death of her father. She became one of England's wealthiest women, mostly from marriages - four in all - to wealthy men.

Construction began in 1552, but Sir William did not see the final result, dying only five years later. His widow then married again and, when hubby number three died, took a fourth. She also saw the construction of Chatsworth through to completion, decades after work had begun.

Her original Chatsworth is no longer extant, but the Hunting Tower she built at the same time still stands on the hill overlooking the current house.

Paintings of the house reveal what it looked like but there are no illustrations of its interior. Only an inventory attached to Bess's 1601 will provides any information about the furnishings of the property.

Chatsworth has its origins in the two sons of Bess and Sir William. The younger son, also named William, bought Chatsworth from his older brother. He was made Baron Cavendish in 1605 and created Earl of Devonshire in 1618.

New house, new era

Present-day Chatsworth dates from the end of the 17th century, when the 4th Earl started making minor alterations and didn't stop. He was created 1st Duke of Devonshire in 1694, not for his building prowess but rather for helping bring William of Orange to the English throne. The present house was completed in 1707.

Three dukes later, the family and its fortunes were profoundly enlarged when the 4th Duke married Lady Charlotte Boyle. She brought to the marriage the properties she had inherited: Lismore Castle in County Waterford, Londesborough Hall and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, and Burlington House and Chiswick House in London. These additional properties came in handy when the Duke's descendants fell on taxing times.

Doing your Duty

The 7th Duke (1808-91) passed on debts that skipped a generation and landed on the desk of the 9th Duke (1868-1938). The latter was also the first family member who had to pay death duties of 40 per cent.

He might have regarded this rate as a bargain if he could have foreseen that one of his descendants would soon face a rate of 80 per cent. In any event, he had to raise more than £500,000, an astronomical amount at that time. And no eBay.

To raise the cash, the Duke sold Devonshire House in Piccadilly. He also raided his vast library, selling "first editions" (presumably first folios) of Shakespeare and several Caxtons. Joseph Caxton founded England's first printing press. The Duke also shed sculpture by Canova and other items.

Sister of the more famous Jack

Edward Cavendish became 10th Duke in 1938. A year later, the Second World War erupted, and both the house and the family would never be the same again.

Edward's two sons were of military age, and both served with the British Army.

The older son and heir, William, Marquess of Hartington, brought a prominent (but not yet glamorous) new name into the family history when, on military leave, he married Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy. She was the daughter of Joseph P Kennedy, the American Ambassador to the Court of St James's, and the sister of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President of the United States from 1960 to his assassination in 1963.

Edward's younger son, Andrew, also married into an illustrious - and notorious - family. His wife was Deborah Mitford (pictured), sister of Nancy (novelist), Unity and Diana (Hitler admirers), Jessica (writer and Communist Party member), Pamela and Tom, the only boy.

Although Andrew was the younger son, he became heir when William was killed in action, only four months after marrying Kick. They had no children - indeed, they had remarkably little time in which to produce a child, with William returning to his regiment in Belgium only six weeks after marrying. Kick herself was killed in a peacetime plane crash, in 1948. Deborah's brother Tom was also killed in action, in Burma.

This wartime period in the family history is passionately recounted by Deborah Devonshire, in her latest book, Wait for Me!.

Aware that death duties could be crippling, Edward prudently arranged his financial affairs to minimise death duties, even eliminate them altogether - provided he got the tricky matter of the timing of his death right.

"Five years had to elapse before this became free of death duties, which under Mr Attlee's Labour government had soared to a dizzying eighty per cent."

Alas, he didn't make it, although he came tantalisingly close:

"Eddie died fourteen weeks before the five years were up and Andrew was faced with raising millions of pounds to satisfy the Treasury's demands."

Andrew's death duties were gargantuan:

"Four-fifths of the value of the land and investments, and of works of art that had been collected by the family for over four hundred years, had to be found."

Once again, family treasures were sold: a Holbein, Rubens, Memling and - later disattributed - a Rembrandt.

And still there was a shortfall:

"On 12 August 1954 Andrew was sitting in the train to London when he had the inspired idea to offer Hardwick Hall, the magnificent sixteenth-century house not far from Chatsworth built by Bess, progenitrix of the Cavendish family, to the Treasury in lieu of cash. …The final payment of death duties was made on 17 May 1967, but interest had been accruing since 1950 and the full debt was not cleared until 1974."

How close did Chatsworth come to ruin in the last century?

"Dry rot and deathwatch beetle invaded the interiors, while self-sown sycamores and rampant brambles made sure the garden walls fell to bits. Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall, Compton Place, Bolton Hall and Lismore Castle were what is now described as 'at risk...."

Today, Hardwick Hall is run by the National Trust, and Chatsworth is controlled by family trusts. The resident Devonshires pay a market rent.

Physically and financially, Chatsworth is possibly in the best shape it has ever been in.