The Past Harvests Project
The Past Harvests Project
Posted by es970
24 June 2026Researchers on the Past Harvests project spent an exciting week in late March at Chatsworth House and Haddon Hall in Derbyshire.
These two jewels of the Peak District contain incredibly rich archival collections. Hidden among neatly tied bundles or tightly wrapped within vellum sheets were records of historic woodland, fields and moorland contained in leases, rentals, accounts and surveys.
These sources are critical to understanding how these landscapes were previously managed and to study farming practices over time including changing land-use, crops and livestock.
The manor of Chatsworth, which later became the core of the present-day estate, wasn’t acquired by the Cavendish family until 1549. Beforehand, the manor was held by a succession of lords whose efforts to organise land-use is remarkably captured in the Hardwick Charters. These charters, which date to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, record field-names and the relative position of boundaries.
A seventeenth book of deeds also provided some unexpected treasures, including a survey of cattle at Chatsworth in 1614 and a contemporary list of the (then) Earl of Devonshire’s horses.
The archive at Haddon Hall, owned by the Manners family since the sixteenth century, holds similar promise to Chatsworth.
The Manners estate has historically bordered that of the Cavendish family, including lands in Baslow, right on the doorstep of Chatsworth House. Haddon is therefore a useful comparator to Chatsworth, revealing how a different ducal family managed the same Derbyshire landscape.
We plan to return to both Chatsworth and (especially) Haddon in the near future.
Written by Alexander Hibberts, Postdoctoral Research Associate
