num_pages: 64
description: This guide book tells the story of Hardwick Hall an Elizabethan architectural gem designed and built to proclaim the wealth and status of an extraordinary woman. Bess of Hardwick knew that her hill-top mansion its tall turrets supporting her stone-carved initials and its facade glittering with thousands of panes of costly glass would be the marvel of its time. Today's visitors will still marvel as they use this book to explore Bess's domain climbing the grand processional staircase to her suite of overpoweringly grand state rooms or the more intimate family floor made cosy by her descendants. Her collection of precious tapestries and rare needlework hangings on the ground floor is unique as is the story of hugely wealthy shrewd and formidable Bess four-times married and the most remarkable Elizabethan woman next to the Queen herself.
language: English
title: Hardwick Hall: National Trust Guidebook
publisher: The National Trust