She was also an enthusiastic house builder and decorator. Together with her second husband, William Cavendish (from whom the Dukes of Devonshire descend), she built a house at Chatsworth (The present Chatsworth stands on its footprint). She also built Old Hardwick Hall around the house she had been born in.
Visitors at Hardwick Hall marvel at the embroideries. Only some of Europe's finest collection of 16th and 17th century embroideries are shown, and then only for a few hours at a time (to protect them from fading). This most feminine of Elizabethan skills was practiced by all the servants at Hardwick Hall - men and women alike.
A large and interesting series of embroideries, displayed in the entrance hall and elsewhere in the house, depicts heroines, goddesses, women of valor and virtues in female form. Could Bess of Hardwick have been a proto-feminist?
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