Thank you for visiting the Renishaw website. I hope it will inspire you to come to Renishaw Hall itself, a house that has been in my family for many hundreds of years.
Renishaw is still very much a family home. My wife Penelope and I spend a good deal of our time here, and our daughter Alexandra – who will eventually inherit the estate – comes with her family to stay in an apartment here.
The garden is very beautiful; do take time to look around it and enjoy the planting and the design. This was initiated by my grandfather, Sir George Sitwell, who loved Italy, and came back to Derbyshire to create what remains one of the most important classical Italianate gardens in Britain. It mixes still and moving water, long views, secret garden rooms, careful planting (exuberant and restrained) and is kept alive and blooming by Penelope and our Head Gardener David Kesteven.
David takes tours around the garden in the season, and if you would like to know more about the plants and the design do join him – please book at the Events Office.
I am afraid, because Renishaw is still our home, the house is not open every day to the public. We nevertheless have dedicated and knowledgeable guides who will be happy to take one of our tours around the ground floor – again, please speak to the Events Office who will be able to tell you when these are taking place. The Sitwells have collected for nearly 400 years and the house is full of the paintings, furniture and china they have brought to Renishaw.
My uncle Osbert, my Aunt Edith and my father Sacheverell were all patrons of the arts and played a significant part in the artistic and literary world at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the artists they launched became famous – John Piper, whose family has an exhibition at Renishaw this summer; William Walton, whose music Edith chose to accompany her controversial poem Façade; Cecil Beaton, the photographer whose iconic images are so familiar to us…
They and others are represented in our museums at Renishaw so please allow some time to have a look in at the Performing Arts Gallery, the Piper Museum and the Sitwell Museum. If you are interested in the family and their friends, I am sure you will enjoy them all.
