21Feb2009: Day 271: Bolsover Castle

Yes another castle day. This was only about an hour and a half away from the hotel and there were lots of other things around it to see. The castle and grounds itself actually took quite a bit of time.

“Bozer castle” as it was pronounced by the people at that time was granted as a reward by King Edward VI in 1553 to George Talbot who was the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. It eventually fell into the hands of the Cavendish family and most what you see today is due to them. About four years after Charles Cavendish started to build the “Little Castle,” he died and his son William then owned the castle and grounds.

The grounds consist of riding house and stable, and a terrace range which is in ruins, and the “little castle” as it’s called. The terrace range had a lot of rooms when it was all together. It consisted of an entrance hall, a great hall, and bedrooms, dressing rooms, and even a long gallery. The audio tour of this area gave you a great description of what the rooms used to look like and the view from here was really neat. I’m not sure what caused them to go into ruins.

The “Little Castle” was very interesting and very different compared to other castles we’ve been in. It’s the oldest of the buildings at Bolsover and it has very interesting paintings on the actual stone. In the hall, there are paintings of Hercules and in another room there are paintings of the five senses. Another interesting thing was the fireplaces. A lot of them are carved from different marbles; pink alabaster, speckled cockleshell, & black ‘touch’. Most of the castles we go to the fireplaces are just hollowed out stone in the wall and these were nicely done. Of course, this castle was more of a living space than a place of defense.

Makenna was really well behaved as she had many rooms and steps that she could wander around. Plus the grounds gave her plenty of opportunity to run around too. She really liked the dragon in the shop and kept calling it a dinosaur. She also took the rubber swords and while Chris and I were looking for another place to visit close by, she was shoving them into the pushcart. Luckily we realized before we walked out with about five swords unpaid for. She wasn’t too happy that we were leaving before eating food as she thought we were going to eat there. So did I so I understood her frustration but we decided that we’d go to the next place and get something along the way.

The next place we attempted to go was called Hardwick Old Hall. It was only about 15 minutes away. We did get there but the Old Hall was closed and the New Hall was all booked up and you could only go through it by a tour. We were allowed to go on the grounds and to the café. The café was okay but a bit disappointing. It was only 2:30pm and they had a menu that said they served certain foods until 3pm but when we tried to order they said they were no longer serving them. I brought up the point that it wasn’t 3pm yet and the waiter said that they stop around 2:30pm. So we ordered a salad that was supposed to have Roast Beef and potato salad but he came back and said it had to be ham. When it came there was coleslaw, which I can’t stand, instead of potato salad. Makenna just ate some of my roll that came with the salad.

We then walked around on the grounds a bit and took pictures of the Hardwick Old Hall which is in ruins. The Old Hall had some interesting plaster on the walls that still survive and I’d be interested in why they think it still is there as it’s exposed to the elements and what happened to the old hall and why instead of renovating the old hall, they just built a new one. I’d love an opportunity to go back and do both so we can learn more about them but we only have maybe 12 weekends left and still so much to see as more is going to be opening up come March.