A romantic Valentine's dinner

I always look forward to planning and putting together our Valentine’s dinner in the Cavendish rooms. Chatsworth is such a romantic venue and I receive lots of emails throughout the year from our visitors who would like to propose to their loved ones here! Our event team love dressing the Cavendish rooms for this special night, lots of candles, dimmed lights, crisp white linen and glasses of fizz! We even get our gardeners involved who help to dress our tables with specially selected flowers. Our wonderful chefs will be serving a tasty dinner, carefully selected dishes to tantalise everyone’s taste buds. It seems the perfect place to pop the question, so watch this space we may have a few more Chatsworth brides! 

Kay Rotchford

Event Business Development & Planning

The original stonework

With lead paint ready for gold leaf and smalt

The finished result

On the West Front, in addition to the gold leaf, colour has been introduced to the pediment and the decorative frieze by using an Italian technique called smalting. Smalt is glass which is strongly coloured with cobalt oxide and reduced to a powder. It is sprayed onto lead paint that has been previously applied to the stone. This is the first time in living memory that this technique has been used in the UK.

Sean Doxey
Head of Special Projects

Facelift in the Stables

The Carriage House refurbishment began in earnest last week; sleek new servery, granite work surfaces and state of the art heating units have all been installed. I have had a few sleepless nights after some small glitches, but after a couple of emergency calls to tradesmen we are well on the way to our new upgraded Carriage House restaurant and hope to welcome our first guests on Thursday. We are still working with the Duchess to choose our new tables and chairs to complete the look, so watch out for the next exciting instalment.

Richard Palmer
Head of Catering and Retail