ES

To Glossop to friends, and from there to Hardwick Hall. I haven't been there for a long long long time.

The whole place is decked out for Christmas, totally over the top, volunteers have put loads of effort in.

Atop the turrets of the Hall are displayed fourteen times the letters ES - Elisabeth Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwick, who built the (new) Hall in the latter years of the 16th century. She also rebuilt and rejuvenated the now derelict old Hall from which the blip is taken, as well as beginning a new house not far away called Chatsworth. Upwardly mobile, she married four times, each time to a wealthier husband, and must have been one impressive woman. Modesty, judging by the “ES” figures stop the Building, was not one of her characteristics.