No two cottages in Edensor look alike. One has Norman arches, the next a Tudor chimney, the one after that a castellated turret or a Swiss-style Alpine roof. This was deliberate. When the 6th Duke of Devonshire had the village rebuilt in the 1830s, his head gardener Sir Joseph Paxton placed each house himself and drew the designs from architectural pattern books. Asked to pick from the options, the Duke — according to Let's Go Peak District — "rather distractedly – chose 'one of each'." The result is 33 dwellings in no single style, arranged above the estate road inside Chatsworth Park.
There is no pub. Edensor is a private estate village of 145 people, most of them Chatsworth staff and pensioners, and the whole place belongs to the Cavendish family, who have held the land since 1549. For a drink you drive to the Devonshire Arms at Beeley, or to Baslow or Pilsley, all a few minutes off.
What Edensor does have is the Edensor Tea Cottage, next to the old vicarage, run by Stuart and Sarah Yates. It does breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea using produce from the Chatsworth Estate — a full English, baked Camembert, homemade quiches, minted kebabs, baked rissole potatoes, Derbyshire oatcakes and sharing boards. It's licensed, takes reservations, and has a small car park and a few outdoor tables. Open every day but Christmas.
The village green is bench-lined and quiet, ringed by the model cottages, with the spire of St Peter's rising over them and Chatsworth House visible across the park. Let's Go Peak District describes it as "surrounded by the chocolate box houses of Chatsworth's model village... a nice place to sit on a bench and take in the beautiful surroundings."
St Peter's is Grade I listed. Its origins are 12th century, but Sir George Gilbert Scott rebuilt most of it between 1865 and 1867 and gave it a tall broach spire. Inside is the Cavendish Memorial, an early-17th-century monument to two sons of Bess of Hardwick. Most Dukes of Devonshire are buried in the churchyard, as is Paxton. So is Kathleen "Kick" Cavendish — sister of John F. Kennedy — who died in 1948. A ground plaque marks the spot where JFK, then President, visited her grave on 29 June 1963. People still come to find it.
The walking is the main event. A 3.8-mile circular runs through the park to Edensor, along the Derwent, past the cricket ground and the house; longer routes link Pilsley, Baslow and the moors, some as far as nine miles. The estate covers 12,000 acres and four villages, and deer herds graze the parkland. There's no station — the nearest trains are at Grindleford or Chesterfield — so most people arrive on the B6012, walk the two miles from Baslow through the park, or take the hourly Peak Line 218 bus from Sheffield and Bakewell, which drives straight past the deer.
None of this is where the village started. The original Edensor stood east of here by the river, and was demolished in stages so the Duke wouldn't have to look at it. Only Park Cottage was spared — reputedly to avoid disturbing an elderly resident who was living in it at the time.
