Elvaston Castle and Ambaston Circular Walk

A pre-Eurovision potter in Debyshire observing two beautiful south Derbyshire villages and a Castle. This pleasant walk will take you into the countryside following part of the Derwent Valley Heritage Way and passing through the stunning grounds of Elvaston Castle Country Park which will be our lunch stop. The walk is mostly level and is suitable for doggies, but please bring a leash as there are a few busy roads we will need to walk along briefly.

The architecture of the castle as seen today dates from the early 1800s, but its foundations go back as far as the 11th century. Owned by many families over the centuries, its final titled owners were the Stanhopes whose ancestor Sir Thomas Stanhope received it as a gift from Queen Mary Ist. With the elevation to the earldom, the family took on the title of Harrington and it was the third earl who commissioned Wyatt to design the Victorian gothic façades that still adorn the castle walls. The fourth earl fancied himself as a bit of a buck, scandalously marrying a Covent Garden actress seventeen years his junior when well into his fifties. Even though the union was a love match, he didn’t want to share her with anyone else and the poor woman was not allowed to travel beyond the confines of the park; neither was anyone allowed inside the grounds. The earl commissioned a relatively unknown garden designer, William Barron to landscape the park and its gardens. Much of his work in the park although badly neglected, can still be traced, from the lake and tufa grottos to matured trees, but it is the Grade 11 listed parterre garden facing the castle’s south front which is Barron’s lasting memorial. The very private estate remained under the ownership of the Harringtons until the Second World War when it was taken over as a ladies’ college until 1947. Remaining empty for the next twenty years it was then bought jointly by the then Derby Borough Council and Derbyshire County Council.

The gardens are one on the many highlights of our walk, not forgetting the ornamental gates in the wall surrounding the castle gardens. The magnificent ornamental gates once adorned a Spanish palace and were probably brought back by one of the younger Harringtons on his fashionable Grand Tour of Europe.

Then go home and enjoy a night of Eurovision!.