Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall Review

Stately house scholar Hugo Montgomery-Massingberd has called this storybook medieval manor set along the River Wye 2 miles southeast of Bakewell, "the beau idéal of the English country house." Unlike other trophy homes that are marble Palladian monuments to a European grand tour, Haddon Hall remains quintessentially English in appearance, bristling with crenellations and stepped roofs and landscaped with rose gardens.

Built between 1180 and 1565, the house passed into the ownership of the dukes of Rutland and remained largely unaltered until the early 20th century, when the ninth duke undertook a superlative restoration. This revealed a series of early decorative 15th-century frescoes in the chapel. The finest of the intricate plasterwork and wooden paneling is best seen in the superb Long Gallery on the first floor. Baking is still done in the bread ovens in the well-preserved Tudor kitchen. Here, too, is the unique collection of Gothic dole cupboards, some original to the house, which would have been filled with food and placed outside for those in need. The wider world saw the house in Pride and Prejudice (2005) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008).