Bolsover Castle

Feel the wind first. Up here on the ridge it comes straight across the valley, and it carries the smell of cut grass and old, cold stone. Under your feet the ground is firm and slightly uneven. Ahead of you, honey-coloured walls rise in battlements and turrets. From a distance it looks like a medieval fortress. Look a little longer, though, and something feels different. This castle was never really built for war. It was built for pleasure, for show, and for a kind of make-believe.

Bolsover Castle sits on a limestone ridge in Derbyshire, a short drive west of Worksop, just across the county line from Nottinghamshire. The ridge is the reason a castle stands here at all. The land falls away sharply into the wide valley below, called the Vale of Scarsdale. Anyone who held this height could watch the roads and the farmland for miles. On a clear day you can still see a long way, and the modern motorway runs like a grey thread through the fields.

The first castle on this ridge was Norman. It was built by the Peverel family in the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when new lords from France were taking control of English land. That early fortress changed hands many times over the medieval centuries. Very little of it survives above ground. What you see today belongs to a much later chapter, and to one remarkable family.

That family was the Cavendishes. In the early seventeenth century, Sir Charles Cavendish began a new building here. He was a son of Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest and most ambitious women in Tudor England, famous for building great houses of her own. Charles did not want a working fortress. He wanted a romantic retreat that looked like a castle from the old stories of knights and chivalry. The design is usually linked to the Smythson family of master masons, who worked for the Cavendishes on other houses.

The result is the building at the heart of the site, known as the Little Castle. It is a compact, tall block with corner turrets and battlements, like a toy keep made full size. But inside it was never a soldier's home. It was a private world for entertaining guests, for eating, talking and showing off taste. Think of it less as a stronghold and more as a stage set, built in stone, for a family that loved theatre.

Step inside, and here is the first surprise for many visitors. The rooms are small and richly decorated. Several still carry painted panels and ceilings from the seventeenth century. Carved stone fireplaces stand in almost every room, each one different. In the upper rooms, small closets have painted ceilings showing scenes of classical gods and heavenly figures. One is often called the Heaven Closet, and another the Elysium Closet, after the paradise of Greek myth.

These paintings were meant to be read slowly, like a puzzle. They mix ideas of love, the senses, virtue and pleasure. A guest moving from room to room would pass from earthly delights towards higher, more spiritual themes. Nobody can be completely certain what every image meant to the family. But the overall message is clear enough. This was a house about the good life, and about the tension between enjoying the world and rising above it.

After Sir Charles died, his son William Cavendish took over and kept building. William became one of the great figures of his age. He was a courtier, a soldier, a patron of poets and playwrights, and later became Duke of Newcastle. He added the long Terrace Range, a grand set of state rooms with wide windows facing the valley. Today much of it stands roofless, its tall walls open to the sky. The empty window frames still show how bold it once was.

Here is a second surprise. William's greatest passion was horses. He was one of the most famous riding masters in Europe, and he later wrote an influential book on horsemanship. At Bolsover he built a Riding House, an indoor hall for training horses in the elegant, precise movements called manège, a kind of horse ballet. It is one of the earliest surviving buildings of its kind in England. Stand inside and imagine the sound of hooves on the floor and the shouts of the riders.

In 1634, William hosted King Charles the First and Queen Henrietta Maria here. For the occasion, the playwright Ben Jonson wrote a short entertainment, a masque, which is a performance of poetry, music and costume. It was called Love's Welcome at Bolsover. The visit was hugely expensive, and it was meant to win royal favour. The whole castle, with its theatrical rooms and gardens, worked like a backdrop for that single day of performance.

That world did not last. When the English Civil War broke out in the 1640s, William fought for the King. After the royalist defeat at Marston Moor in 1644, he went into exile on the continent. Parliamentary forces took Bolsover, and parts of it were damaged. In exile he married Margaret Cavendish, a bold writer and thinker who published poetry, plays and early science fiction. After the monarchy returned, William came home and began to repair the castle.

Now walk out into the Fountain Garden beside the Little Castle. A high wall surrounds it, and a walkway runs along the top, so guests could stroll and look down on the garden and the valley. In the centre stands the Venus Fountain, with a statue of the goddess of love surrounded by carved figures. It has been carefully restored in recent years. When the water runs, the sound fills the enclosed space. It is a small, private paradise inside the castle walls.

Today the castle is cared for by English Heritage, and families come for the gardens, the views and the wide grass terraces. Before you leave, pause on the wall walk or by the terrace edge. Look back at the Little Castle, with its turrets against the sky. Then look out across the valley. The same wind is still moving over the ridge. The Cavendish dream of chivalry, music and horses has gone quiet, but the stone stage they built for it is still here, waiting for its next audience.