Tudor England’s other Bess

Bess of Hardwick — who died Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury — was a remarkable and fascinating woman. The wife of four men, builder of four houses, and by her death the second richest woman in the country, the exceptional Bess has attracted many biographers.

Kate Hubbard’s new book differs from these by examining Bess’s life as a ‘builder within the context of the Elizabethan building world’. It is, consequently, part biography and part building history, considering along the way the erection of Elizabethan prodigy houses, such as Longleat, Theobalds, Wollaton (‘a monstrous building, heavy and hectic, overcrowded with ornament, overwhelmed with glass’), and, above all, Bess’s Hardwick New Hall. It is in here that we can still see Bess’s wit, ambition, creativity and vast wealth.

She was born into minor gentry. Another recent biographer, Mary S. Lovell, calculated the year of her birth to be 1527, but Hubbard guesses that she was ‘probably born in 1521, or early 1522’, though offers no evidence in support.