Hardwick Park, Derbyshire

Famously built of 'more glass than wall' by Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, at right angles to the single storey dwelling in which she was born, and which she also remodelled, Hardwick is the greatest Elizabethan house in the country. The High Great Chamber, on the upper floor was thought by Sacheverell Sitwell to be 'the most beautiful room, not in England alone, but in the whole of Europe'. Whilst the shape of the Hall in the watercolour approximates to the building as it now stands, Cox probably executed the watercolour from memory.