Bolsover Castle Secret Knowledge

When I was 21,

I had just finished the final exams of my history degree,

and I went to the library one day,

and accidentally picked up this book.

It's brilliant. I remember reading it in one afternoon.

And it's called Robert Smythson And The Elizabethan Country House.

The book rediscovers the work of Smythson and his son, who were mason-designers -

this is before the professional architect arrives.

They were shadowy, forgotten figures,

but they were responsible for the greatest houses of the Elizabethan age.

The book builds up slowly to a huge climax which is set on a windy hilltop in Derbyshire.

The last chapter is all about this place, Bolsover Castle.

It was designed by the Smythsons in 1612 for the Cavendish family,

one of the great aristocratic dynasties in the north of England.

The castle makes an incredibly dramatic sight

in its rather incongruous spot above the town of Bolsover,

the place where the miners' strike started in the 1980s.

It's a completely unexpected place to find a fairytale castle,

which, for me, makes it all the more magical.

I stumbled upon this place by picking up a random library book,

but it became very important to me.

Not only as an architectural masterpiece,

but as the perfect example of a building that captures the spirit of its times.

By the 1630s,

the castle had become the pleasure palace of a playboy cavalier, William Cavendish.

His very distinctive personality comes across

in every quirky detail of the masonry and decoration.

It's William's story that I want to tell,

and to show how his very eccentric castle

captured some of the tensions in 17th-century England

that would eventually lead the nation to bloody civil war.

The book that made such a deep impression upon me

was by Mark Girouard.

He's an architectural historian who pioneered the idea

that the inhabitants of a building are just as important as its designers.

He taught us how buildings can tell stories about the past.

Here's Mark Girouard casting his spell.

"By an unlikely miracle,

"the keep at Bolsover has survived

"as an almost untouched expression in stone

"of the lost world of Elizabethan chivalry and romances."

Well, by another unlikely miracle,

I managed to get a job here in my twenties,

working for English Heritage.

I spent six years of my life here, which I loved,

and I got sucked into the crazy world of the man who built Bolsover Castle.

William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,

he was the ultimate cavalier at the court of Charles I.

The castle William built is full of secrets and hidden meanings.

You can read it in all sorts of different ways.

I'm going to draw out one story,

because I believe William built this castle as a gamble,

as a roll of the dice, as an attempt to impress the king.

But we need to go back further.

It was actually William's father, Sir Charles Cavendish,

who first began building the castle on this site in 1612.

Sir Charles came from an eminent northern family,

his mother was the most important person in Elizabethan Derbyshire.

She was Bess of Hardwick, builder of Hardwick Hall -

the amazing building just there - you can see it on a sunny day.

Bess had climbed the ladder to power and riches by getting married four times.

As the poem goes, "Four times the bridal bed she warmed,

"and each time so well performed,

"that when death spoiled each husband's billing,

"he left a widow every shilling."

Her third son, Charles,

wanted to compete with Bess on the housing front.

So, he acquired the ruins of a Norman keep, just here.

Bolsover isn't grand like Hardwick,

it's quirky and eccentric and a bit offbeat,

and to my mind, all the better for it.

William's father, Sir Charles Cavendish,

was a truly talented amateur architect.

This is a very exciting moment in history of architecture

because it's going from being a mechanical art,

as learnt by the medieval master mason on the job,

to being a liberal art - something you can learn about by reading books.

Something fit for gentlemen.

And Charles Cavendish is one of the very first gentleman architects.

Bolsover Castle is a close collaboration

between Sir Charles and his masons, Robert and John Smythson,

the subjects of Girouard's book.

I see it as a team effort,

the builders themselves played an important creative role.

But Charles Cavendish was quite conservative in his tastes.

The new classical buildings were starting to appear in Britain,

but what he's gone for here is a Gothic, chivalric,

romantic re-creation of the Norman keep that had been on the site.

However, poor old Charles died before the castle was complete.

At 23 years old, his son William inherited it,

and brought about a very clear change in the direction of the project.

So, in 1617, our young hero, William,

took over the building project,

and very quickly put his own stamp on the castle his father had begun.

At the same time as we get the development of this new profession of architecture,

we get the arrival of Classicism.

We can see the tension between the old and the new,

the chivalric and the classical in this building.

Essentially, it's medieval in character.

This is Sir Charles Cavendish's vision of the past,

with the battlements and the turrets

and the outsized crossbow slits,

not really very practical for defence,

but this is a castle for chivalry.

But if you look at the shell of the building that William inherited,

he started to add the new classical detail onto it.

That's why over the entrance there,

we've got that classical pedimented doorway

and immediately over the entrance, the classical figure of Hercules -

who is essential to the whole of the hidden meaning in this building.

But more on him and his significance later.

Now, when William Cavendish takes over the completion of the castle

with all of this classical detail,

I think it's fair to say that the local craftsmen don't get it right first time.

Here's an example of proper Classicism.

It's a garden gateway designed by Inigo Jones,

top architect of the period, and built in London.

Now, Inigo Jones understands the secret of Classicism.

It's the mathematical relationship between the horizontal and vertical.

It's sometimes called "The Golden Section".

It's the harmony of parts,

everything has to be carefully measured and in proportion.

You can see that here in Jones's design.

William Cavendish decided that he wanted a gateway just like this

and he sent his surveyor, John Smythson,

to go and make a drawing of it.

Unfortunately, though, Smythson didn't realise he had to measure.

What he's produced is a rather crude, naive copy of Jones's elegant design,

lacking proper classical proportions.

The result is that when the gateway appeared on the building at Bolsover,

it was a slightly bodgey version of the original.

Bolsover Castle then was a place for architectural experimentation.

It's important to realise that it wasn't the main family home

of this branch of the Cavendishes.

That was seven miles away at Welbeck Abbey in Sherwood Forest.

This former monastery was the economic centre of their estate,

it's where their business got done.

Bolsover, on the other hand, was a holiday house,

a pleasure palace, if you like.

It was described in a poem as being like a pearl, like a pendant in the ear.

It was a place where the more exotic side

of William Cavendish's character would reveal itself.

William was a typical cavalier.

He was a charming, witty and handsome figure.

A writer of bawdy poetry,

with a passion for the finer things in life.

He was obsessed with pleasure of all kinds,

but that wasn't quite enough for him.

William longed to be taken more seriously at court,

but he had a bit of an image problem.

People said he spent too much of his time dabbling

with the art of architecture, or with his lady friends.

But William was ambitious, he wanted to be made Master of the Horse,

an important post in the royal household.

And he was uniquely equipped for this.

He was the best horseman in the country.

The Master of the Horse was in charge of the royal stables

and of all the transport arrangements for the court.

It was a politically important position, close to the king

and commanding power and respect.

With typical exuberance, William built a grand riding house,

and a range of a buildings dedicated entirely to horses.

If I were to say the words to you, "the cavaliers",

you'd probably think of gentlemen with long, curly hair,

and lacy collars and a kind of arrogant attitude.

But actually, they take their name from the very technical art of horsemanship,

the art of the caballero.

This isn't just riding horses for hunting or for the battlefield,

it's teaching horses how to dance,

how to perform these astonishing moves of an aerial ballet,

the "airs above the ground" they are called.

Here's William Cavendish performing the "capriole",

when the horse literally leaps up into the air.

They need immense strength to do this and daily training.

If you were an expert horseman like William Cavendish,

you would have done it every single day.

If it was raining outside,

then you would have constructed for yourself one of these buildings.

It's a lost building type - the riding house.

Noblemen had them in the 1630s, up and down the country.

This is the only substantial survivor here at Bolsover Castle.

The features are the soft, sandy floor for the horses' hooves,

the windows that are high up,

so the horse can't look outside and get distracted.

You need a big door to the outside, and ideally a viewing gallery,

because you invite all of your friends to come and see the daily training.

William Cavendish here at Bolsover

would've been in the riding house every day,

doing this kind of thing, taking the horses through their exercises,

round and round these tall posts placed in the middle there.

William Cavendish learnt how to ride at the Royal Mews.

He shared his riding lessons with King Charles I himself.

The King was really good at this.

It's important, actually,

for a prince or king to be able to do this because it's symbolic.

The rider in control of the horse

is like a person in control of their passions.

Somebody who's in charge,

somebody who is able to present a dignified face to the world.

So, being good at riding is, in fact, a really important part of being a good king.

William did have a reputation as a dilettante.

Somebody who was very frivolous.

He wasn't serious, but actually, when he was in the riding house, he was deadly serious.

William's talent as a horseman was undisputed,

but he needed to sway King Charles I.

He'd make his bid in the best way he knew how.

The castle would provide the stage for a masque,

a scripted theatrical party.

It would form the climax to a sumptuous weekend of feasting, music and dancing.

William commissioned the celebrated playwright Ben Jonson

to write the masque that would be dedicated to the king and queen.

His plan was to charm his royal guests to giving him

the prized position of Master of the Horse.

While this may have seemed like a great idea,

it was also a tremendous gamble.

Politically, this was a time of growing puritanical zeal,

building up against the decadence and indulgence of the ruling classes,

sowing the seeds for the coming civil war.

On a more practical and personal level,

it would cost William a small fortune to put it on.

He couldn't afford for anything to go wrong.

So imagine the scene, it's the 30th of July 1634,

that must've been the most exciting day

in the whole history of Bolsover Castle -

the day that the king and queen came to visit.

Here would've been William Cavendish to welcome them.

Now, I think that he brought the whole castle

and gardens and paintings and everything to perfection for this day,

to make a particular point to the king and queen.

This is the house of Hercules.

There he is, positioned right over the entrance.

In mythology, Hercules did something very, very bad,

he accidentally killed his wife and children.

But then, he performed his nine heroic labours in order to redeem himself,

to get himself back to the straight and narrow.

He was able to do this because he had the special qualities and abilities of a hero.

In mythology, you often see Hercules resting in the garden of pleasure,

because he doesn't need to keep plugging away up the difficult hill of virtue,

because he has these special characteristics.

You can see the relevance to William Cavendish.

By saying, "I live in the house of Hercules",

he's saying, "I am Hercules, I'm entitled to enjoy myself,

"to indulge myself in pleasure, because I also have inner virtue."

So that's the sort of scenario

which I think he's presenting to the king and queen

as he welcomes them and takes them into his castle.

The furniture has long since disappeared,

but the revealing paintings decorating the walls remain.

You can see how this concept of William Cavendish as Hercules might begin to work

if you imagine him bringing the king and queen on a tour.

They've entered underneath that statue of Hercules over the entrance,

performing one of his nine heroic labours.

He'd temporarily taken over Atlas's job of holding up the globe,

and here, in the great hall,

Hercules is performing a whole lot more of his labours,

which mainly involve killing or subduing violent, wild animals.

My favourite picture is that one,

where he's dealing with a man-eating mare, he's about to club it.

This is most appropriate for a horseman like William Cavendish was.

This room is called the Pillar Parlour, for obvious reasons.

It is one of the masterpieces of Bolsover Castle, there's so much going on in here.

The ceiling bosses have got winged horses - more love of equestrianism.

And also, we've got that clash between the cosmopolitan and the local.

The design of the panelling is copied from one of the royal palaces, the palace of Tibald,

and yet the black paint comes from local black coal dust.

Even in the 17th century, mining was going on in this area.

The paintings in here describe the five senses.

We've got sight...

..and smell...

and taste,

and sound

and touch. All of these came into their own

during the masque on the royal visit.

The king and queen, in this room, were invited to take part in a banquet of the senses.

A song was sung about the five senses,

and they were given a banquet to eat.

And by "a banquet", I don't mean a meat feast,

I mean a special pudding course,

with special wines and sweetmeats and desserts.

During this, perfume was burnt, so they could smell a lovely smell,

and they could touch a velvety carpet on the table.

The whole thing, for the king and queen, was a banquet of the senses.

Downstairs, we experienced bodily pleasures,

but up here we are in the elevated world of the heavens,

with the stars on the ceiling.

In here, we have religious symbolism.

We've got saints on the wall and figures from the Bible.

The fireplace in here is particularly miraculous with the beautiful marbles

and it also shows that clash between the old and the new.

This fireplace combines the Gothic, pointed arch in the middle here,

with the new, classical columns holding the whole thing up.

Once again, William is personified in his castle.

Here he is in the corner of the room, alongside his brother,

amongst all the saints, aligning himself with their virtue.

Another hint to the king that he would be a good man to have around.

And finally, we come into the bedchamber.

You might think it's a bit odd to invite the king and queen into your bedroom,

But the point of the day is this - the house is theirs.

Of course they should have access to all parts of it.

This room forms the climax of the tour and here Hercules's choice

between virtue and pleasure is laid out in architectural terms.

I believe that here, the king and queen were invited to turn left or right

into one or the other of these two little closets,

these private rooms for solitude and contemplation.

This one represents virtue.

This first closet is the closet called "Heaven".

It represents virtue.

It's incredibly richly decorated with these gold,

Chinese, oriental-type scenes.

And the walls are set with cupboards

so you could store your musical instruments or your books in here.

But the main thing is the ceiling. Look at it, it's incredible!

This is a ceiling all about religion and virtue.

There are the symbols of the Passion,

the baby angels are all crying because Jesus has just been crucified.

But right up on the ceiling, there he is going off to heaven.

It's quite an unusual depiction of Jesus.

There's a William Cavendish twist going on here.

Jesus is shown enjoying himself. He's dancing.

The other closet was about the Christian version of the afterlife,

this one is a complete contrast.

Here we've got the classical version of the same thing.

The gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus and they're enjoying themselves.

Basically, they're having an orgy.

This closet is always known as "Elysium".

Here's a footnote, in the 19th century,

the castle became used as the local vicarage.

When the vicar was taking guided tours around,

he didn't call this the Elysium closet, he referred to it as "Hell".

The king and queen would have been invited to choose between virtue and pleasure.

But I think I know which was William Cavendish's favourite.

This closet seems a lot more personal to me.

This is where Hercules himself has ended up, sitting in the corner.

And over the window, there is a very intimate little motto.

It says, "All is but vanity".

As if William Cavendish is saying,

"I may be a duke, I may be the owner of this fabulous castle,

"but in this little private room, I'm just a human being."

The other reason I think this is the more important closet,

that pleasure is more important than virtue,

is that this is a closet with the view.

And it looks right down on the Goddess of Love in that garden of pleasure below.

It's a fountain that's all about love of different kinds.

On top is the Goddess of Love, Venus.

She's surrounded by her little naked, urinating boys, protecting her.

But around the outside she's being attacked

by these leering, lascivious men in white in the niches,

and also by the so-called "priapic beasts" of Bolsover,

and they are pretty X-rated.

The Venus statue was based on a slender, elegantly turning classical figure,

although here, like the gateway, we get the Derbyshire version.

She's been transformed into a more solid local lass.

And if she were to stand upright, we'd see that one leg is longer than the other.

But rather than sneer at the dumpy Bolsover Venus,

I think we should celebrate her as an example of British classicism.

She's bold and characterful and she makes us smile.

This is a fountain for a man who definitely places pleasure over virtue.

After the tour was over, the castle proved the perfect

setting for putting on Ben Jonson's theatrical event, Loves Welcome,

to amuse and impress King Charles I.

Different historians have their own interpretations

about where the masque might actually have been performed.

But it does contain the stage direction "in a garden" like this.

So, I think we can imagine all the courtiers up there

around the top of the wall walk,

with the actors and the scenery and the musicians down here.

This painting shows the king and queen at a masque dressed as Apollo and Diana.

They are seated on a mechanical floating cloud

and the Bolsover production had one too.

It was also a little bit risque.

Jonson's script poked fun at short people, a bold move

when both the king and William himself were not terribly tall.

So, what did the king and queen make of all of this?

They must have had some sort of discussion about the relative merits of pleasure and virtue.

Did King Charles say, "Well, William Cavendish, you are a cheeky chappie,

"but I like the cut of your jib!"

Or did he find all this kind of excess rather distasteful?

Was he going to give William Cavendish the job?

Was the whole thing going to work?

Well, no, it didn't.

And, in many ways, William's masque was a massive miscalculation.

The choice of Ben Jonson as author was poor,

Jonson was out of favour at court.

William had misjudged the character of the king as well.

Charles was a cold and cerebral man.

He wasn't interested in debauchery.

Finally, times were a-changing.

The Puritan party was growing in strength.

The luxury of the court was becoming increasingly unpopular.

The last word on William's great party would be that of the judgemental Earl of Clarendon.

He said, "Yes, it was a stupendous entertainment.

"But God be thanked, no man ever imitated it."

And William would never get the job of Master of the Horse.

He was left severely out of pocket

and with his reputation tainted,

the party was definitely over.

William Cavendish would've wanted us to remember him

as a great poet and a great courtier.

We don't.

But I don't think that his life was wasted.

Because we can still enjoy the incredibly evocative ruins of his house.

It's an outrageous, idiosyncratic castle that captures

the cavalier spirit of its creator.

And for me, this will always be the place where I found my vocation,

through an accidental encounter with a book when I was just 21.

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