A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'C'

C - Chatsworth House

Many Jane Austen devotees  believe that Mr Darcy's Pemberley is based on Chatsworth House, the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

Looking west across to Chatsworth House with the Peak District as the backdrop.

Even a non-Austen fan visiting Chatsworth might recognize the description as it was observed by Jane’s heroine, Elizabeth Barrett:

“It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place of which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.”

It’s not surprising that Elizabeth “… felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”

The connection with Chatsworth was to be maintained when Pride and Prejudice was filmed, using the Chatsworth exterior and two important rooms for Mr. Darcy’s mansion. It will be interesting to see whether Derbyshire’s Chatsworth becomes as associated with Pride and Prejudice as Yorkshire’s Castle Howard is with Brideshead Revisited.

(The above text is taken from my article 'Houses in Fiction' issued in The Lady magazine in October 2008)

Photo attribution:

 © Copyright Paul Collins and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Magazines of Mine - Sepia Satuday

We have never been a family that subscribes to magazines. We may have dabbled with one or two related to cooking or to the art or writing, but now it's a case of a weekend magazine issued with the Saturday paper and in which i usually only scan the pictures.

However I do have a few back issues with which I have been associated. These have had an influence on many of my blog posts.

In 2008 my "Houses in Fiction" appeared in "The Lady." 

The article included photos chosen by the magazine - and I'm not sure where I stand with copyright so you will have to settle with these representing the houses I wrote about.

From Uncle Tom's cabin I jumped to:

followed by Green Gables on Prince Edward Island.

That triangle at the bottom left of the blurb was a picture of Pride and Predujice's Mr Darcy on the steps of Pemberley, aka:

Chatsworth House
(By Paul Collins - 2007)

The site for Brideshead Castle on TV and in a more recent film was here at Yorkshire's - 

Castle Howard

We have to move further north for the location of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the films of JK Rowling's Harry Potter Books.

Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

My second magazine is from a local Yorkshire town.

The piece that was my second blogspot post was about Gertrude Bell. You can read Al Khatun here. 

I hadn't discovered Sepia Saturday then or identified the source of photos I could have used. But here is two that would have been appropriate.

Gertrude Bell in Iraq in 1909
(From the Gertrude Bell Archive)

Rather unkindly the photo identifies the lady's age as 41.

The Al Khatun article also revers to the Theodore Roosevelt's famous African safari in 1909 where he shot his first lion.

(From African Game Trails, published in the USA 1910)

Sir Alfred Eward Pease (centre), is flanked by Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore's son, on the left and the former President Theodore Roosevelt on the Athi Plains in 1909.

As for the lion,  it is immortalised in the stained glass window in Guisborough's St Nicholas Church shown in the Al Khatun blog post.

You may browse through other magazines at Sepia-Saturday-248.