Hatfield House

“ The town of Hatfield is a quaint, straggling place, with narrow streets and many antique houses. A steep declivity leads up to the old church, dedicated to St. Etheldreda, just outside one of the entrances to the grounds of Hatfield House. The church contains a monument to Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, also tombs of the Botelers, Brockets, and Reads of Brocket Hall.
The entrance gateway, close to the churchyard, leads to what are now the stables of Hatfield House, a fine red-brick structure, once the banqueting-hall of the Bishop's Palace. ”

“ The most urbane of housekeepers conducted me through it, and I found in wandering from chamber to chamber, from one great saloon to another, from library to hall, and from gallery to chapel, the particular sort of entertainment of which, on the whole, I am fondest. Nothing is more interesting than the observation of interiors—of human habitations which have been greatly lived in. Hatfield is full of the things that make a house interesting—historical memories, picturesque arrangements, handsome appointments, traces of great hospitality and of connection with great contemporary events. ”

“ The residence at Hatfield of Queen Elizabeth is connected with the old palace. Among the features of Hatfield House are the marble hall, its oak-panelled walls hung with tapestry, and its panelled ceiling painted; the grand staircase, hung with portraits; the long gallery, with its armour and pictures; King James’s drawing-room, a magnificently decorated apartment; the great dining-room, with a bust of Lord Burleigh; the armoury ”

“ From Somersetshire I went to Hatfield, arriving just after sunset. You could only just see the red colouring on the majestic old house, but all the windows blazed and glittered with light through the dark walls; the Golden Gallery with its hundreds of electric lamps was like a Venetian illumination. The many guests coming and going, the curiously varied names inscribed upon the bedroom doors, give the effect of having all the elements of society compressed under one roof. It was pleasant to meet Lady Lytton, beautiful still, and with all the charm of the most high-bred refinement. ”

“ Royal reviews and grand hospitalities were common in the Metropolitan district, such as the Grand Review in Hyde Park, but perhaps the most memorable in which the Hertfordshire Volunteers took a part was the Grand Review of the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers in Hatfield Park, on the 14th June, 1800, in the presence of the King and Queen and other members of the Royal Family, Cabinet Ministers, and a host of distinguished people, whom the Marquis of Salisbury entertained at Hatfield House with such splendid hospitality that the entertainment cost L3,000. ”

“ And now, for ever and a day, those who use the road between Potter’s Bar and Hatfield village must go an extra half mile. This is indeed a free and happy country.
Hatfield village touches the extremity of wretchedness, just as Hatfield House marks the apogee of late feudal splendour. And yet, amid its tumbledown hovels there are quaintly beautiful old-gabled cottages with bowed and broken-backed red-tiled roofs, delightful to the artistic eye, if from the builder’s and decorator’s point of view sadly out of repair. Motor repair-shops and garages, with their squalid p. ”

“ Off in stately Whitehall, in the palace of the boy king, her brother, the revels were grander and showier; but to the young Elizabeth, not yet skilled in all the stiffness of the royal court, the Yule-tide feast at Hatfield House brought pleasure enough ”

“ This double period of building may, perhaps, account for the combination of the flat roofs and the gables. It subsequently passed by marriage to Everard Digby, and is one of the innumerable places where, tradition says, the Gunpowder Plot was hatched. There was a marked desire for a picturesque sky-line, which led, in some flat-roofed houses like Heath Hall, Barlborough in Derbyshire, and Hatfield House (Fig. 116) , to the carrying up of bay windows to form turrets above the parapet. Chimneys were most frequently taken up in separate flues, but occasionally in solid stacks. ”

“ The west wing of the present mansion, built for Cecil in 1608-1611, was destroyed by fire in November 1835, the dowager marchioness of Salisbury, widow of the 1st marquess, perishing in the flames. Hatfield House was built, and has been restored and maintained, in the richest style of its period, both without and within. The buildings of mellowed red brick now used as stables and offices are, however, of a period far anterior to Cecil’s time, and are probably part of the erection of John Morton, bishop of Ely in 1478-1486. The park measures some 10 m. ”

“ The immense tension at which he lived rendered it impossible to cultivate any taste for art or literature, yet he certainly had an innate appreciation of grandeur and symmetry in architecture, and he inherited from his father what amounted to a passion for building and planting. In 1607, James I, having taken a fancy for Lord Salisbury's beautiful house at Theobalds in Hertfordshire, offered to exchange Hatfield for it. ”

“ The drawing-room and grand staircase have always been admired, but, as a whole, the house is large and stately rather than beautiful. Elizabeth is said to have visited here before she became Queen, and in the park, as at Hatfield, an oak is shown as the one under which she loved to sit. From the Hall the most charming walks may be taken in any direction; e.g., through the park S.E. to Lemsford Mill, or S.W. to Cromer Hyde, N.W. to Water End, or N.E. to Ayot Green. More charming still is the ramble—permission should be requested—beside the winding Lea towards Old Marford and Wheathampstead. ”

“ We called at Hatfield on our way here: a fine pile of old house with many pictures—Burleigh, Cecil, Leicester, and Elizabeth. Do you remember meeting Lady Salisbury [Footnote 1: Amelia, daughter of the first Marquis of Downshire, and wife of the first Marquis of Salisbury. She was burnt to death in Hatfield House, 27th November 1835.] at Lady Darnley's? little, lively, good-humoured, very alert and active. What do you think of her fox-hunting, though past seventy? Mr. ”

“ The mansion has been restored to its pristine magnificence; the landscape gardening is fine. The noble owner of Hatfield has devoted a portion of his domains to the pastimes of the people; and on every occasion, whether it be the reception of royalty, or the entertainment of the toilers of the country, it is carried out in the generous spirit of olden English hospitality. And this princely place lies within a score of miles of the metropolis and its three million of people, who are brought almost to the park gates within an hour's railway journey. ”

“ There lay a mass of something dark. It was the great stone that had thundered through the roof of the mill just after young Roland Ferrier had given the deputation their answer. Hatfield looked up at the ugly hole in the ceiling, a hole that repeated itself in the two upper floors and the roof, through which he could see the sky. The moon was shining brightly by this time, and the many-windowed building was lighted well enough for the man to find his way about. ”

“ About this period, his lordship laid the foundations of the present mansion of Hatfield, which he finished in 1611, in a style of equal splendour with that of Burghley, which his father had erected in the preceding reign. The year after the completion of Hatfield, worn out by the cares of state the Earl of Salisbury died at Marlborough, in Wiltshire, on his way to London: he was interred in Hatfield Church, under a stately monument. How striking an example does the closing year of his life present! ”

“ Hatching Green is a hamlet on Harpenden Common, 1 mile S.W. from the station, M.R.
HATFIELD may be visited by fast train from King’s Cross, G.N.R. (17 miles) , the station being opposite the W. gates of the park. The older parts of the town lie on the western slope of a hill close to the railway; at the top stand the church and portions of the old palace, beyond which, in the park, stands the fine mansion of the Cecils. The town is of great antiquity; the Saxon Kings, who called it Heathfield (the Hetfelle of Domesday Book) , owned the manor until it was given by Edgar to the monks of Ely. ”

“ Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs (as in most English villages, however small) , but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farm-houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old settlers, among whom everything had been going on prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ”

“ Such a place as Hatfield is, to my sense, one of the most beautiful things the world possesses—one of those things which we instinctively feel the vanity of any attempt to reproduce, just as we feel the indisposition to gossip about any deep experience. ”

“ The studs of English gentlemen are certainly better lodged than some of their tenants, and at Hatfield the very horses are subjected to those ennobling influences of which I just spoke. The Gothic arches expand, far aloft, above the clean, spacious boxes, with polished sides, where the glossy hacks and hunters turn their heads to show you the whites of their charming eyes ”

“ Heathfield.—Prior to 1790 the whole of this neighbourhood was open common-land, the celebrated engineer and inventor, James Watt, after the passing of the Enclosure Act being the first to erect a residence thereon, in 1791. By 1794 he had acquired rather more than 40 acres, which, he then planted and laid out as a park. Heathfield House may be called the cradle of many scores of inventions, which, though novel when first introduced, are now but as household words in our everyday life. ”

“ Shortly after the receipt of his lordship's bounty, Hatfield set off for London; hired a small phæton; was perpetually at the coffee-houses in Covent Garden; described himself to whatever company he chanced to meet, as a near relation of the Rutland family; vaunted of his parks and hounds; but as great liars have seldom good memories, he so varied in his descriptive figures, that he acquired the appellation of Lying Hatfield. ”

“ Near the wood, the resort of this highwayman, is Hazelbury House, a sixteenth-century mansion, much reduced in size, whose formidable battlemented garden walls are worthy of a fortress. It was once a seat of the Strodes, whose arms are displayed on the lofty piers of the entrance gate. On the other side of the Great Bath road is Cheney Court, another gabled mansion which has been of importance in its day, and within half a mile, Coles Farm, a smaller building, alas! fast falling to decay. ”

“ This was made evident, one day, when a political procession, with hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums, fifes, clarions, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows of buildings, marched all through town, and trailed its length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent uproar, past the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven Gables. As a mere object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a procession seen in its passage through narrow streets. ”

“ But the room, in its present condition, cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint, and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. ”

“ She passed, and I don't believe anyone noticed anything wrong with her dress, and she was so thankful not to have to go through that long waiting again. It is a most fatiguing day for those who haven't the entrée, as they must sit so long in their carriages in the file.
Hatfield, May 30th.
We came down yesterday to this most beautiful old place. A large Elizabethan castle, standing rather high, with courts and terraces in every direction. We found Lady Salisbury at her tea-table on the terrace with a lovely view of park and woods on all sides. ”

“ Her presence imparted an indescribable grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice. In other respects, it was a substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and seemed fit to be the residence of a patriarch, who might establish his own headquarters in the front gable and assign one of the remainder to each of his six children, while the great chimney in the centre should symbolize the old fellow’s hospitable heart, which kept them all warm, and made a great whole of the seven smaller ones. ”

“ The gentleman for whom I built Hopefield was superstitious, as many men of advanced years are, as to the building of a new house, and as the site he chose is one of the finest in the county he compelled me to construct this house—which is the most satisfactory I have built—in such manner enough of the old should be kept intact to soothe his superstitious soul with the idea that he had merely altered an old house, not built a new one. ”

“ The Yorkshire park, the Rutlandshire estate, and the thirty industrious labourers were all impressed into his service once more, and the landlord allowed him to have what he liked. When the suspicions of Boniface were aroused by the non-arrival of the equipages and attendants he presented his bill. Hatfield assured him that his money was perfectly safe, and that luckily his agent, who collected the rents of his estate in the north of England, was then in Ireland, and would give him all needful information. ”