The two great houses visited on this walk are within four miles of each other as the crow flies, but each has made a unique impression on the face of the Peak District.  Chatsworth, ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire has developed following the fashions of house-building nobles.  Additions have been made since its first owner, the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, founding matriarch of the Cavendish dynasty almost bankrupted her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury.  In its development, Chatsworth has grown to well deserve its unofficial accolade, as the ‘Palace of the Peak’.  On the other side of a forested ridge, Haddon Hall the Duke of Rutland’s country seat has remained virtually unchanged since its Tudor founder Sir John Manners first developed the house above this secluded bend in the River Wye. Renowned as one of Thomas Hobbes ‘Seven Wonders of the Peak’, Chatsworth ranks in architectural merit alongside the finest of all Britain’s great houses.  The original hall which once held the captive Mary Queen of Scots was a Tudor manor.  It was built on the site of an older dwelling by the Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick.  All that is left of that house is a raised walled garden where the imprisoned Scots Queen took her ease; another remaining feature is the hunting tower overlooking the house from Stand Wood.  The house we see today dates mostly from the late 17th century when the 4th Earl, later to become the 1st Duke of Devonshire.  Apparently a man who was hard to please as he used several architects before he was satisfied with the resulting magnificent Palladian mansion.  The last major changes were made by the 6th Duke of Devonshire, the Bachelor Duke who had Sir Jeffry Wyatville design the north, or Theatre Wing....

It is hard to believe that the ever constant bustle of Derby’s traffic is barely a couple of miles away at its closest point.  Kedleston’s park is an oasis of tranquility, with now naturalised groves and plantations, set around hundreds of acres of green-sward and lakes.  All this overlooks winding ponds separated by tinkling waterfalls, the breeding ground of visiting and permanent wildfowl, making a perfect foreground for the hall, ancestral home of the Curzons With only a quarter of its park turned over to the golfing fraternity, the rest of Kedleston Park is perfectly designed for enjoyable walking, be it on one of the graded woodland walks or beside attractive lakes made by damming Cutler Brook. Modern walkers seem to have more energy than the Regency ladies and their squires who contented themselves with a gentle stroll of say half a mile in the pleasure grounds. Even though none of the strolls available for today’s walkers is more than 3¼miles, it can be longer, and in fact the walk I describe here links two of the longer walks, covering an easy 5¼miles. There is also the possibility of a visit inside the hall to appreciate its treasure-trove of links to generations of Curzons. One of the finest of England’s stately homes, Kedleston Hall was built in the nine years between 1761 and 1770 by the great architects of the time, James Paine and Robert Adam for the first Lord Scarsdale, designed in the then popular classical style.  Greek columns and classical statuary decorate exquisite rooms laid out in order to influence visiting royalty by their abundance of treasures. To improve the appearance of the finished house, the medieval estate village of Kedleston was demolished and rebuilt in its present position as a model village, partly hidden half a mile...