The roofless shell of Bess of Hardwick's first Hardwick mansion, standing yards from the grander New Hall she raised soon after
Bess of Hardwick ranked among the wealthiest and best-connected women in England by 1587, when she began building this house where her family’s older, more modest manor had stood. She had just left her fourth husband, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, after the marriage fell apart, and returned to her family’s land at Hardwick to build a house that matched her new standing as a countess.
Before work on the Old Hall had even finished, Bess started on a second, still grander house right beside it in 1590, this time designed by the architect Robert Smythson — this became Hardwick Hall, known today as the New Hall. The two houses were never meant to replace one another; they worked as a pair, like twin wings of a single household. Bess died in 1608, and her son William Cavendish went on to found the Cavendish family who still live nearby at Chatsworth as Dukes of Devonshire.
After the Devonshires came to prefer Chatsworth, workers began taking the Old Hall apart during the 1750s, and it stood open to the weather from then on; trees were planted inside its walls as an ornamental ruin in 1793. What survives are four roofless storeys of bare stone, with plaster ceiling panels from the 1590s, some of the best surviving examples from that period, still in place on the upper floors; a viewing platform installed in the 1990s brings you close enough to see them properly. English Heritage owns the ruin, but day-to-day visits are run by the National Trust alongside neighbouring Hardwick Hall, the New Hall Bess built next door.
