Five on Friday

It's Friday so I'm joining in with  Amy at Love Made my Home for this week's Five on Friday.  Click on the link at the bottom of this post to find others who are joining in too.

 We have done quite a bit a driving out and about into Derbyshire recently and I've enjoyed seeing all the autumnal colour along the way.  The early afternoons have been golden with bright sunshine enhancing the copper colour of the trees and the fallen leaves along the footpaths.  Sometimes we have driven along through leaves descending as thick as snowflakes.  Travelling home in the evenings we have watched the copper and gold fade from the trees and hedgerows to be taken up by the sky as the setting sun sends out streaks of golden yellow across its fading blue  which soon turns to grey with black clouds lining the horizon making them look like separate lands, small, inaccessible islands miles away.  As the sky turns grey so does the land, the green fields take on an ashen hue and the gold and copper trees turn black in the gathering gloom.  Of course driving along I haven't taken any photos but the images of sunsets and nightfall are clear in my mind.  

Yesterday on our way home from visiting my sister in hospital, rather then head through the town of Chesterfield, we cut across country and stopped for a while to look at the ruins of Sutton Scarsdale Hall and to take in the views across the M1 motorway and to the stately Bolsover Castle on its hill.

Below are five photos I took whilst we were there with five facts about the hall. 

The remains of the rather grandiose Baroque style Georgian Hall are Grade 1 listed. 

The Hall was built between 1724 and 1729 by the architect Francis Smith of Warwick who successfully incorporated the remains of the old hall which dated back to 1469 within the new structure.

It was built for the 4th Earl of Scarsdale and many notable craftsmen worked on the interior including wood carvings by Grinling Gibbons.  The cost of the all the work took its toll on the Scarsdale family and in the 19th century they sold it to  descendants of the industrialist and mill owner Richard Arkwright, whose factories we passed on our way home through Matlock Bath and Cromford.

In 1919 the Arkwright family sold it to a firm of asset strippers.  Three of the rooms still exist and are in the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.  Another wood panelled room is in the Huntington Library in California.

The ruins of the hall were saved from demolition by Sir Osbert Sitwell, of nearby Renishaw Hall, who bought it in 1946.  In the 1970s the Sitwell family persuaded the Department of the Environment to take it into their guardianship.  It is now looked after by English Heritage.  The medieval church next to the ruins is dedicated to St Mary.


Below are five more photos of some of the details around the ruins.

It's time for coffee then I have a doctor's appointment so I'll catch up with you all later today.

Have a lovely weekend.