Paxton and the Great Stove

Extract

The recent discovery of account books for the period of Sir Joseph Paxton’s association with Chatsworth has thrown further light on several important aspects of his work there. The accounts now available cover in considerable detail the construction of the Great Conservatory or Stove at Chatsworth, from 1836 onwards, under Joseph Paxton’s aegis. It is interesting to note that this one venture cost more than one tenth of the amount of £313,608 spent by the Sixth Duke of Devonshire on “Improvements at Chatsworth House” from 1820 to 1848: an expenditure which, coupled with other lavish outlay, was no doubt responsible for much of the Sixth Duke’s financial difficulty in the eighteen-forties. The total cost of the Great Stove was £33,099 10s. 11d., made up (in round figures) of £1,416 in 1836, £5,221 in 1837, £5,321 in 1838, £6,458 in 1839, £11,673 in 1840, and £3,100 in 1841; this completes the separate account for the Stove, although other minor external works were involved after 1841. Had the Duke been born a century earlier, he would have built a temple or a mausoleum: living in an age when romanticism and scientific discovery went hand in hand, he chose to build rockworks, fountains and great buildings of glass.