JEWEL-LIKE FIREPLACES

Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire was begun by Bess of Hardwick's third son Sir Charles Cavendish in 1612, and completed by his son William; designed by John Smythson (like the Swarkestone Pavilion) but very much conceived by the older Cavendish as a suitable setting for courtly entertainments. Most of the later buildings are now roofless ruins which form a dramatic setting for the miraculously intact Little Castle, with its lovely painted decoration, panelling, vaults - and its jewel-like fireplaces...

When the castle was in its heyday in the 1630's, when Charles I and his court visited, these rooms (all evocatively named: Elysium, Star Chamber, Heaven) must have been filled with luxurious furnishings and fabrics, to say nothing of the court's glorious clothes. Today, the stars of the show are the fireplaces, each a tour-de-force of Smythson's eccentric design, some adapted from Serlio's published designs (then an exciting novelty, with an English edition of his Architecture printed in London in 1611) but altered to include gothic pointed arches and strapwork, that defining motif of Jacobean design.

I love the uniqueness of the naive, English designs, and the materials themselves: the simple limestone, the veined pink alabaster, and inset, gemstone-like features of Ashford Black marble and speckled cockleshell. They have recently been restored with Ashford Black mined from the original source on the Chatsworth estate.