Three miles below Bakewell, near the Wye, is one of the most famous old
mansions of England--Haddon Hall. This ancient baronial home, with its
series of houses, its courtyards, towers, embattled walls, and gardens,
stands on the side of a hill sloping down to the Wye, while the railway
has pierced a tunnel through the hill almost underneath the structure.
The buildings surround two courtyards paved with large stones, and cover
a space of nearly three hundred feet square. Outside the arched
entrance-gate to the first courtyard is a low thatched cottage used as a
porter's lodge. Haddon is maintained, not as a residence, but to give as
perfect an idea as possible of a baronial hall of the Middle Ages. To
get to the entrance the visitor toils up a rather steep hill, and on the
way passes two remarkable yew trees, cut to represent the crests of the
two families whose union by a romantic marriage is one of the traditions
of this famous place. One yew represents the peacock of Manners, the
present ducal house of Rutland, and the other the boar's head of Vernon.
Parts of this house, like so many structures in the neighborhood, were
built in the time of "Peveril of the Peak," and its great hall was the
"Martindale Hall" of Scott's novel, thus coming down to us through eight
centuries, and nearly all the buildings are at least four hundred years
old.
[Illustration: HADDON HALL, FROM THE WYE.]
Entering the gateway, the porter's guard-room is seen on the right hand,
with the ancient "peephole" through which he scanned visitors before
admitting them. Mounting the steps to the first courtyard, which is on a
lower level than the other, the chapel and the hall are seen on either
hand, while in front are the steps leading to the state-apartments. The
buildings are not lofty, but there are second-floor rooms in almost all
parts, which were occupied by the household. There is an extensive
ball-room, while the Eagle Tower rises at one corner of the court. Many
relics of the olden time are preserved in these apartments. The ancient
chapel is entered by an arched doorway from the court, and consists of a
nave, chancel, and side aisle, with an antique Norman font and a large
high-back pew used by the family. After passing the court, the
banquet-hall is entered, thirty-five by twenty-five feet, and rising to
the full height of the building. In one of the doorways is a bracket to
which an iron ring is attached, which was used, as we are told, "to
enforce the laws of conviviality." When a guest failed to drink his
allowance of wine he was suspended by the wrist to this ring, and the
liquor he failed to pour down his throat was poured into his sleeve. A
tall screen at the end of the room formed the front of a gallery, where
on great occasions minstrels discoursed sweet music, while at the
opposite end the lord and his honored guests sat on a raised dais. Here
still stands the old table, while behind the dais a flight of stairs
leads up to the state-apartments. Stags' heads and antlers of great age
are on the walls. Another door opens out of the banquet-hall into the
dining-room, the end of which is entirely taken up with a fine Gothic
window displaying the Vernon arms and quarterings. This room is
elaborately wainscoted. The royal arms are inscribed over the fireplace,
and below them is the Vernon motto carved in Gothic letters:
"Drede God and Honour the Kyng."
An exquisite oriel window looks out from this room over the woods and
grounds of Haddon, the recess bearing on one of its panels the head of
Will Somers, who was Henry VIII.'s jester. The drawing-room, which is
over the dining-room, is hung with old tapestry, above which is a frieze
of ornamental mouldings. A pretty recessed window also gives from this
room a delightful view over the grounds.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE BANQUET-HALL, HADDON HALL.]
The gem of Haddon is the long gallery or ball-room, which extends over
one hundred feet along one side of the inner court: the semicircular
wooden steps leading to this apartment are said to have been cut from a
single tree that grew in the park. The gallery is wainscoted in oak in
semicircular arched panels, alternately large and small, surmounted by a
frieze and a turreted and battlemented cornice. The ceiling is
elaborately carved in geometric patterns, and the tracery contains the
alternating arms and crests of Vernon and Manners: the remains are still
visible of the rich gilding and painting of this ceiling. In the
anteroom paintings are hung, and from it a strongly-barred door opens
upon a flight of stone steps leading down to the terrace and garden:
this is "Dorothy Vernon's Door;" and across the garden another flight of
steps leading to the terrace is known as "Dorothy Vernon's Steps." It
was the gentle maiden's flight through this door and up these steps to
elope with John Manners that carried the old house and all its broad
lands into the possession of the family now owning it. The state bedroom
is hung with Gobelin tapestry, illustrating AEsop's fables: the state
bed is fourteen feet high, and furnished in green silk velvet and white
satin, embroidered by needlework, and its last occupant was George IV.
The kitchen and range of domestic offices are extensive, and show the
marvellous amount of cooking that was carried on in the hospitable days
of Haddon; the kitchen has a ceiling supported by massive beams and a
solid oak column in the centre; there are two huge fireplaces, scores of
stoves, spits, pothooks, and hangers, large chopping-blocks, dressers,
and tables, with attendant bakehouses, ovens, pantries, and larders;
among the relics is an enormous salting-trough hollowed out of one
immense block of wood. Beyond the garden or lawn, one hundred and twenty
feet square, extends the terrace, planted with ancient yews, whose
gnarled roots intertwine with and displace the stones. This terrace
extends the full width of the outer or upper garden, and gives a
charming view of the southern front of the hall.
[Illustration: THE TERRACE, HADDON HALL.]
More romance hangs about Haddon than probably any other old baronial
hall in England, and it has therefore been for years an endless source
of inspiration for poets, artists, and novelists. Mrs. Radcliffe here
laid some of the scenes of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_. Bennett's "King
of the Peak" was Sir George Vernon, the hospitable owner of Haddon.
Scott has written of it, a host of artists have painted its most
attractive features, and many a poet has sung of the
"Hall of wassail which has rung
To the unquestioned baron's jest:
Dim old chapel, where were hung
Offerings of the o'erfraught breast;
Moss-clad terrace, strangely still,
Broken shaft and crumbling frieze----
Still as lips that used to fill
With bugle-blasts the morning breeze."
But, unlike most baronial strongholds, the history of Haddon tells only
the romance of peace, love, and hospitality. It came by marriage into
the possession of the Vernons soon after the Conquest; one of them, Sir
Henry Vernon of Haddon, was appointed governor of Prince Arthur by Henry
VII. His grandson, Sir George Vernon, lived in such princely
magnificence at Haddon that he was known as the "King of the Peak;" his
initials, "G. V.," are carved in the banquet-hall. Around his youngest
daughter, Dorothy, gathers the chief halo of romance. The story in brief
is, that her elder sister, being the affianced bride of the son of the
Earl of Derby, was petted and made much of, while Dorothy, at sweet
sixteen, was kept in the background. She formed an attachment for John
Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland, but this her family violently
opposed, keeping her almost a prisoner: her lover, disguised as a
forester, lurked for weeks in the woods around Haddon, obtaining
occasionally a stolen interview. At length on a festal night, when the
ball-room was filled with guests summoned to celebrate the approaching
nuptials of the elder sister, and every one was so wrapped up in
enjoyment that there was no time to watch Dorothy, the maiden,
unobserved, stole out of the ball-room into the anteroom, and through
the door, across the garden, and up the steps to the terrace, where her
lover had made a signal that he was waiting. In a moment she was in his
arms, and rode away with him in the moonlight all night, across the
hills of Derbyshire, and into Leicestershire, where they were married
next morning. It was the old story--an elopement, a grand row, and then
all was forgiven. Sir George Vernon had no sons, and his daughters
divided his estate, Haddon going to Dorothy, who thus by her elopement
carried the famous hall over to the family of Manners. Dorothy died in
1584, leaving four children, the oldest, Sir George Manners, living at
Haddon and maintaining its hospitable reputation. Dying in 1679, his son
John Manners, who was the ninth Earl of Rutland, became the master of
Haddon, and "kept up the good old mansion at a bountiful rate," as the
chronicler tells us. He kept one hundred and forty servants, and had so
many retainers and guests that every day the tables in the old
banquet-hall were spread as at a Christmas feast. The earl was raised to
the rank of duke, and his son John, Duke of Rutland, known as the "Old
Man of the Hill," died in 1779, since which time the family have not
used the hall as a place of residence, having gone to Belvoir in
Leicestershire. Its present owner is the sixth Duke of Rutland, Charles
Cecil Manners, and the descendant of the famous Dorothy. There are few
places, even in England, that have the fame of Haddon, and it is one of
the chief spots sought out by the tourist. The duke maintains it just as
it existed centuries ago, with the old furniture and utensils, so as to
reproduce as faithfully as possible the English baronial hall of his
ancestors.