Edensor must be one of the few villages in England set in what was a private park, and still to be entered through a white gate.
When the 6th Duke of Devonshire looked out from Chatsworth House he saw that the magnificent view across the park was blocked by a village....so he moved it! In those days, the village stood on a ridge east of the house, and in 1839 the Duke's gardener, one Joseph Paxton, was given the task of shifting the village to a new site to the west of Chatsworth Park.
The houses were designed by John Robertson of Derby, and no two were alike. In a riot of architectural fancy he gave them Swiss-chalet roofs, Italian style windows, Jacobean gables, Tudor chimneys, and Georgian doorways. Paxton made sure the houses were placed well apart, surrounding a broad green planted with laburnum trees.
The Church of St Peter was rebuilt on its original site 25 years after the village had been moved. The architect was Sir George Gilbert Scott and he employed the Early English style, giving the church a great tower and soaring spire that dominated the village.The Lady Chapel has a fine monument to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, and his brother Henry. Other members of the family are buried in the churchyard, which also contains the body of Sir Joseph Paxton who was knighted after building London's Crystal Palace in 1851, and who died 14 years later.
Many American visitors will come here to visit the grave of Kathleen Kennedy, daughter of Joseph Kennedy, United States Ambassador to Britain, and sister of the late John Kennedy, President of the United States, whose visit on the 29th June 1963 is commemorated on a plaque in front of the grave. She was married to the present Duke's elder brother the Marquis of Hartington, and was killed in a flying accident in France in 1948, four years after he husband had been killed in action.
At Edensor one is inclined to think of the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots, for there is a brass in the chancel in memory of her faithful servant John Beton. He helped her to escape and was imprisoned with her at Chatsworth, dying there. The plate, three feet long, with a Latin inscription below which is a tiny figure in armour lying on a tomb, was set here by his two brothers at the wish of the queen, his most kind mistress.
A huge and costly monument in the Cavendish Chapel is in memory of two sons of the famous Bess of Hardwick and her second husband, Sir William Cavendish. At each side is a mythological figure, and at the top a display of arms. Fame with a trumpet is holding Latin inscriptions to Henry Cavendish, and to William, first Earl of Devonshire, a friend of James I who is said to have helped to colonise the Bermudas and has an island named after him. Recently, this superb monument has been fully restored.
A lane continuing from the village street climbs for one mile and give increasingly better views back over Chatsworth Park and the Derwent Valley. High in the woods above the valley is the Hunting Tower, which was part of the original 16th-century Chatsworth House, built on a different site to the present house. Another remnant of that age is Queen Mary's Bower, near the Derwent and Chatsworth Bridge. This is where it is thought probable that Mary, Queen of Scots, spent some time while a prisoner at Chatsworth in the 1570's.
