Apartments of state in houses were intended for the reception of the reigning monarch, and the resident family would not have inhabited the rooms themselves.
The layout and sequence of rooms is derived from the apartments in royal palaces in London and continental Europe. A common theme is the inclusion of an 'enfilade': a suite of rooms where the doorways are all in line with each other.
At Chatsworth, the interior decoration and furnishing of the State Apartments are lavish and of the highest quality to be found in the 1st Duke of Devonshire's house.
The apartments occupy the position of the Elizabethan Long Gallery of Bess of Hardwick’s original house, and are therefore unusually placed on the second floor of the building, not on the first floor as would be expected in the late 17th century. This compromise in planning is due to the 1st Duke initially intending to only rebuild the south range of the house.
Chatsworth's State Apartments were made accessible to paying visitors in the 17th and 18th centuries, including the celebrated authors and diarists Celia Fiennes (1662-1741), Daniel Defoe (c.1660-1731) and Horace Walpole (1717-1797), all of whom wrote and published their observations.
By the 19th century, the rooms had become deeply unfashionable, and their survival without major alteration is unusual. They were first used for their original purpose by a visiting monarch in 1913 when George V and Queen Mary stayed at Chatsworth, using the State Bedroom and State Music Room as their bedroom and dressing room.
In 1939, the rooms were emptied and used as dormitories for Penrhos College, a girls’ boarding school evacuated to Chatsworth during World War II. The atmosphere of this time was captured by Edward Halliday (1902-1984), who recorded the State Drawing Room in a painting.
In 2006 - 2007 the State Apartments were redisplayed following an in-depth research project into how they might have looked when first furnished. The Chatsworth House Trust charity continues to display as much original furniture and artworks in these spaces as possible.
