My great grandmother first told me of Bess of Hardwick when I was 6 years old. She has been my favorite historical figure- male or female- ever since! ❤❤❤ thank you. I was so excited to see a show on her as I have already read every book I could find over the years. ❤

The place is very beautiful with lots of windows allowing natural light to come through.

how very beautiful

So beautiful place

Oh the irony! I just watched a National Trust documentary on Hardwick Hall this morning!

Loved this and hadn't seen it before either!❤

Hardwick Hall- more glass than wall...

It's astonishing that it survived, given the unseen window tax instituted in 1696 !! That's a lot of tax, there!!!

Please keep in touch whenever I need things straightened out I'm going to come to you thank you very much

So, you had to go up a hidden staircase, exit out a tiny door, walk across the roof to get to the individual, highest rooms at each corner of the manor?

If Bess Hardwick built the castle, what do the initials ES stand for?

I'm a hardwick

For those who don't want to sit through the endless repetition of the introduction, the actual presentation starts at ~3:28. (Why? Just why? Anything longer than, maybe, 20 seconds is just tedious and annoying. The documentary will tell us everything you're blathering on about in the intro. It's like a 3 1/2 minute ad... *but we're already watching!* )

... more glass than wall....

Even Renee-sance isn’t correct for the Kings English. It was the Renaissance.

This states a Chas Stuart as being a grandson of Henry VIII... NOPE!! That is incorrect!!

what on earth?? a red winged dragon and lion with a crown is the royal coat of arms? in Biblical imagery the dragon is symbol of Satan and the Lion is a symbol of Christ. Also I noticed in the tapestry of the table with with nobility that there are smaller people to the side and standing around the table, and musicians, servants, some appear to be dancers, and among these just below the table there are figures in pairs, light colored figures with wings and right next to them what looks like their counterpart but a figure that is black from head to toe, what on earth?? Or should we say, not of the earth? that is just odd why not paint people being helped and served and bettered by the ruling classes. this reminds me of how the ruling classes of this time would adopt the church as a sign that they were ruling and divine, yet at the same time taking advantage of the lower classes and even killing off whole populations of people with different religious views because it threatened their hold on things, something governments have done since the beginning of history. you will know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:15) these tapestries are similar even to what is depicted in the art of the kings of ancient Egypt. this time period was a time of gratuitous waste and abuses by the ruling classes, as evidenced by these very buildings, and this is why these systems collapsed and republics emerged among the populations. the leadership in the modern world could take a lesson from this, currently, because it’s starting to repeat the same mistakes. and this is the same pattern that repeats itself all throughout recorded history. nations are born, they grow, they become empires and then they begin to take advantage of the people. One sign that that a culture has reached this tipping point is gratuitous, growth, riches, spending and abuse of the ruling class when it has grow too large and been in charge too long. expect the collapse that needs to happen next.