Chatsworth

The Great Dining Room

A Picture of the 'Great Dining Room'

So called to distinguish it from the State Dining Room and three other dining rooms in the house, this is the first important room of Wyatville's wing. When it was finished in 1932, the 6th Duke wrote 'It abswers perfectly, never feeling overlarge...It is like dining in a great trunk and you expect the lid to open'. It was used by the family until 1939 and redecorated and hung with crimson material in 1996.

The four heavy gilt pier tables were made for the room. The glass lights on the wall were at Devonshire House, put up here in 1959, having been in packing cases for 40 years. The marble fireplaces and bacchanalian figures were carved by Sir Richard Westmacott the Younger (1799-1872) and Robert Sievier (1794-1865). The 6th Duke was disappointed with them; 'I wanted more abandon and joyous expression' he wrote.

The first dinner given in this room was for Princess Victoria when she stayed here with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, 1832. The Princess was 13 and it was the first time she dined with grown-up people. There was a cooked rehearsal the night before. Most of the large pieces of silver, commissioned by the 6th Duke for use at banquets, are by Paul Storr (1771-1844) and Robert Garrard (1793-1881).