Hi, my name is Ellie Dashwood and today we'll be talking
about my trip to Pemberley.
I know a lot of you probably love Pride and Prejudice, which is probably why
you subscribed to this channel about classic literature and period dramas.
And so you've probably seen the 2005 version of Pride and
Prejudice with Keira Knightley, where she goes and sees Pemberley.
And it's just absolutely incredible looking.
And this is of course the same house that plays Pemberley
in Death Comes to Pemberley.
And you can go check that out, I believe it is still up on Netflix.
But have you ever wondered who plays Pemberley?
Like what cast member is this magnificent house?
What is that cast members real name?
And it is Chatsworth House.
It is actually the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.
You can go and tour it.
And that's what I did.
And that's why I'm going to be telling you about here today.
So first of all is absolutely gorgeous and we're talking rolling
green hills filled with little sheep.
We went in May, my friends, Kelsey, Rachel, and I.
All the sheep had just had babies.
And so there was the cutest little lambs running everywhere.
After you drive through these like beautiful, winding little old roads,
going past all these beautiful trees and hillsides, a little fields with sheep,
you finally get up to Chatsworth House.
And it is absolutely spectacular looking.
It looks like it does movies.
I mean, it's just amazing.
I knew that we were going to go be touring Chatsworth when we were in England.
So I sort of made a bonnet and I wore like an empire waisted like maxi-dress, because
that's about as authentic as I get.
Well, when you first walk into the house, you like paid for your tickets and you
go up and pretty soon you find yourself in that foyer that you see in Pride and
Prejudice that has a black and white tile and the big staircase that goes up.
And when I was visiting Chatsworth house, they had a special, um, Sort of
show going on throughout the whole house of like fashion throughout the eras.
And so they had a lot of old clothing from the Devonshire family all over the place.
And so that was really interesting to look at and you got to walk through all
the rooms and you've got to see all the little displays and just, it is amazing.
It's I don't know how people can actually live there cause it is like
living in this amazing looking museum.
One thing I was kind of disappointed about is they keep all the windows shut and even
the ones that are open, like for light wise have like these screens over them.
So everything's very, very dark inside, which I know that really
helps preserve old things better.
But at the same time, one thing you see a lot in the Pride and Prejudice of 2005 is
like a lot of natural light everywhere.
And they probably also brought in artificial light for the movie.
But I feel like they just open those windows.
It would be so much prettier in there, but it's still so gorgeous.
So you go through the entire house and you also get to go through the part
where they have all the statues from the movie, and those are all really there.
And one of those statutes is, I believe, it's called like
the Veiled Virgin or something.
And it's the one you see in the movie.
And she goes up to her and there's just like this, like cloth over her face.
Now it looks when I first saw that movie, I thought like,
okay, that has to be a plaster.
There's no way you can get that detail where you can see the girl's
face through the marble in real life.
But no, that is a real marble statue.
It was actually commissioned by the six Duke of Devonshire who
was known as the Bachelor Duke.
And he was actually the Duke when Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice.
And I know this because they have the Vestal Virgin, like right on
the small hallway that leads from the library section of Chatsworth
into the gallery of all the statues.
And so I like come around that corner and I see it.
And I'm like, that's the statue from the movie.
And this older man, who's standing there because throughout the house
they have, you know, people who can tell you more about the house.
Are also probably there to watch you and make sure you're not like,
I don't know, graffiting stuff.
I don't know.
But anyway, one of the guys who works there, he says older, man.
It's like, "Yes, it is.
You're talking about Pride and Prejudice.
Right?" And I'm like, "Yeah."
And I'm like thinking, "Yeah, of course I am.
I'm wearing a bonnet."
Anyway, he comes and he tells us all about the statue and how it's a real
marble statue and how the artist who did it would lock himself away when
he would do statues and sculpture.
So no one knows this technique of how he got that veil that way.
And all these years later, we still don't know how he did it
because he never shared that.
And I just find that so fascinating.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
I would definitely suggest making sure you have time to look at all
those, all the statues and the area.
Once again, that area's super dark versus in the movie where
it's filled with beautiful light.
So if Chatsworth people, you ever see this, open the
windows, it would be so pretty.
Also, the older man who worked there was also trying to convince me the six Duke
of Devonshire is who Jane Austen based Mr.
Darcy off of.
He was a bachelor Duke.
He had a mistress and stuff, but he never married.
He was a very much into gardening and horticulturalism, and that's
one of the reasons they have such absolutely gorgeous grounds.
Anyway, I should put a picture of him somewhere.
Here you go, this is him.
Do you think this is a good Darcy?
I don't know.
I'd have to meet him to really decide, like, if I'm okay with thinking that
this is the guy who inspired Mr.
Darcy.
So once you go through the whole house tour, it leads you straight into the
gift shop where they do have the bust of Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy from
Pride and Prejudice, the movie, the one that you see, in the movie in
the gift shop, you can look at it.
I did not take a picture of it for some reason, because I'm just not very smart.
Like I, the whole time I thought I'm going to do this, but then
once I got into the gift shop, I was like a kid in the candy store.
And I just started looking at all this stuff.
And they do have some really great stuff there.
I absolutely love their gift shop.
And their gift shop has the most natural light of this entire experience,
probably because they're not worried about the $5 magnets, you know, dying.
Versus the hundreds of years old sculptures.
And then, so after we did that tour, we went out into the grounds.
Now the grounds at Chatsworth are just super extensive and I would really
suggest you give yourself a lot of time.
By the time we got out in the grounds, we only had like an hour or something.
And so we started going around the grounds.
And it was so gorgeous.
They have like this old miner's tunnel thing you can walk through.
They have waterfalls, they have this hedge maze and it just goes on and on.
They have the area where they have that fountain you see in all
the movies that Chatsworth is in.
And it was absolutely gorgeous out there.
And everything was in bloom when I was there, because it
was about mid-May when we went.
This is the part where the story gets somewhat more interesting.
Because at this point we've done the house tour.
And we're out in the gardens and we get to the center of the hedge maze.
And we're so happy, we're like.
Now, this is one thing I'm going to talk about another video.
I'm going to make about surprising things about my trip to U K, but is
everything closes really early there.
In the United States, even like the little bookstore down the
street stays open till 9:00 PM.
But in the UK, they're like, "Let's close everything super early."
So Pemberley closes at like 5:30.
And if I keep calling Chatsworth, Pemberley, just know what
I'm talking about.Chatsworth.
You have it closing at 5:30.
So by the time we make our way back out of the hedge maze, we're like
looking at our phones and we realize that it is 5:30 already, or like 5:35.
And we're like, "Oh wow.
We better start heading towards the parking lot."
But the thing is, we're like all the way out in the gardens.
So we have to walk back towards the house towards the gate that
lets us out to the parking lot.
As we get there, we realize everyone else has already left.
And then we get to the gate, we realize it's locked.
We're like locked in Pemberley.
And I'm just like, "Oh, actually this is kind of cool.
I'm locked in Pemberley."
But like my friends, they start freaking out.
I don't know.
Maybe as Americans, we just watch too many episodes of Locked Up
Abroad, but they were both like, "No, they're going to arrest us."
So we find this nice older lady who works at the gift shop and she is
one of the only people left there.
We tell her, "Hey, we got locked in.
Is there any way we can get out?
We're super sorry."
And she's like, "Oh yeah, sure.
Don't worry about it.
I'll just call security and they'll open the gate for you."
And so my friends start to relax.
So it's like, "Okay.
They seemed really nice and understanding.
This probably happens often.
We're all going to be fine.
They're going to open the gate and we can go to our car."
And so she calls security.
She gets off the phone with them.
She turns to my friend and is like, "Oh, well, we're just going to have to wait
for the Duke and Duchess just to come.
And then we can let you out."
And my friend's like starts freaking out.
She's like, "No, no, no.
Don't bother the Duke and Duchess.
We'll be fine.
We can jump over the wall."
And it's like this like giant brick, eight foot drop on the
other side of the wall, by the way.
But that's like how freaked out my friend was, because cause
she's like, "No, they're going to bother the Duke and Duchess.
What do you say?"
I'm just over here, like, "We're going to meet a Duke and Duchess,
this is the most exciting thing ever."
But then the older lady is like trying to like calm my friend down.
It's just like, "No, no, it's fine.
The Duke and Duchess, they're just coming in, in their private helicopter and all
the security team has gone to meet them.
So they're at the helipad, until they can escort the Duke and Duchess back to the
house and then they can open the gate.
Because none of us have keys."
And my friend's like, "Okay, okay."
We're waiting there at the locked gate.
And we're all like looking for the helicopter in the sky.
And we're, I'm just like super excited.
My friends are kind of still nervous.
But then the saddest thing in the world happened.
The lone security guard who happened to be somewhere beyond this giant
estate, came walking up and let us out.
I know it was so anticlimactic because it's just like we were going to meet the
Duke and Duchess, and then the security guard shows up and opens the gate.
So I had to be like, "Okay, I'm not going to be the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.
It's probably for the best.
They probably don't like finding random American girls locked in their garden."
But still, it was an exciting moment where I almost met them.
So, we go and we get in the car.
And we start driving away and as we do we see their helicopter coming in overhead.
So technically I saw the helicopter of the Duke and Duchess.
I was quite excited about that.
And so as we drive away and we see the helicopter go and we're like,
almost out of like the, sort of the driveway of Chatsworth house.
And we stopped because they're really cute, like little sheep.
This is a really the problem why we're going to get locked up abroad is not
because we get locked in people's gardens it's because of what I did next.
Which is there's all these signs that are like, "Do not worry the sheep."
I worried the sheep.
I got out of the car.
And was chasing the sheep, cause I wanted to pet them,
but they all ran away from me.
And then they'd like run away from me and they looked back at me with
this, like, "What are you doing girl?
You're weird.
Why are you chasing me?
I'm a cute sheep."
But I wanted to pet the baby sheep.
So, then I got back in the car and we left Chatsworth.
And I was like, so sad.
I was like, "Pemberley.
Why do you leave me?"
Woo.
So that is the exciting story of how I almost met the Duke
and Duchess of Devonshire.
How we got locked in Pemberley.
And we also got chase cute sheep.
Or in the terms of the signs that were telling us not to do
that, I was "worrying the sheep."
But the sheep did not look worried.
The sheep looked mildly irritated and questioning my sanity.
That's what the look that the sheep had in their eyes.
But they were so cute.
So hopefully if you ever go to England, you should tour Chatsworth
because it's absolutely awesome.
Admittedly, make sure you leave before 5:30.
Also do not worry the sheep because the sheep will disapprove of you.
And also wear a bonnet because bonnets are really, really cool.
And you should wear them.
And that's the story of my trip to Chatsworth.
Now, leave in the comments below whether you think this guy is really
the inspiration for Mr Darcy and make sure to subscribe to my channel and
follow me on Instagram @elliedashie.
Thank you so much again and have a wonderful day.