The Dukeries

A loving portrait of a vanished England, written in the early twentieth century when the great ducal estates still cast long shadows over the Nottinghamshire countryside. Murray Gilchrist guides readers through The Dukeries, that peculiar corner of England where four ducal seats once stood within a few miles of each other, their parks and private grounds forming an almost continuous tapestry of landscaped elegance. He walks the ancient lanes around Worksop Manor, penetrates Sherwood Forest's remaining oaks, and lingers at Rufford Abbey, weaving together the architectural grandeur of these houses with the human stories woven through them: Bess of Hardwick's fierce ambition, the legendary footsteps of Robin Hood in the mossy glades, centuries of earls and dukes shaping the land. This is travel writing as nostalgia, capturing a world on the eve of enormous change, when one could still trace the contours of medieval boundaries and feel the presence of centuries in the stone of a courtyard or the planting of an avenue. For readers who dream of old England, of village pubs and church towers rising above deer parks, Gilchrist offers a gentle, detailed companion to a landscape both real and mythic.