The Cascade and its Temple were the crowning glory of the 1st Duke’s Garden with the first phase of construction being completed in 1696. The Duke then decided to enlarge it even more – creating a longer, steeper and wider water flight and constructing a new temple, called the Cascade House.
The Duke may have been inspired by King Louis XIV’s palace at Marly near Versailles which was also a model for the west front of Chatsworth House – and the Duke even hired King Louis’s hydraulics engineer Monsieur Grillet to design the waterworks.
This was a complicated project and each step of the Cascade is different, so that the sound of the water changes as it falls.
In the temple, there is a water trick in the floor so that the Duke could control sudden spurts of water to catch his guests by surprise! All the water which runs down the Cascade feeds the Sea Horse Fountain in the south lawn and then flows via a pipe into the river Derwent. It really is a masterpiece engineering and beauty.
We now want to restore the Cascade to its former glory and use it to deepen our engagement with our wider community. Accessibility has been part of Chatsworth since the 17th century. In 1844 the house was open every day in the year, Sundays not excepted. And the instructions then were that ‘The humblest individual is not only shown the whole but the Duke has expressly ordered the waterworks to be played for everyone.’
