Monumental new sculpture takes root in Chatsworth gardens

A monumental sculpture has been unveiled as the new centrepiece in the gardens of a well-loved Derbyshire stately home.
Laura Ellen Bacon and 'Natural Course'.Laura Ellen Bacon and 'Natural Course'.
Laura Ellen Bacon and 'Natural Course'.

Designed to appear as if seeping from the ground and flowing down a woodland slope, ‘Natural Course’ has emerged as the new, monumental sculptural centrepiece of Chatsworth’s biggest garden transformation for nearly 200 years.

Created from more than 100 tonnes of local stone, ‘Natural Course’ is made up of tens of thousands of individual, hand placed pieces using a traditional dry-stone walling method.

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The artist, Matlock-based Laura Ellen Bacon, designed the sculpture and worked with a small team of local dry stone wallers to build it in a previously undeveloped, 15-acre area called Arcadia.

The piece was assembled by coordination of hand and eye to give the great mass of stone a sense of slow, gradual movement over the land, suggesting an innate life force to the hard and seemingly motionless stone.

At more than ten metres in length and two metres in height, with a base width varying from 50cm to three metres, visitors will be able to enter up to five metres into ‘Natural Course’, giving a feeling of being swallowed by stone.

The Duke of Devonshire, who owns the house and gardens, said: “We were keen on a new sculpture for the garden that strongly evoked both Chatsworth itself and the Derbyshire landscape from which it was born so I visited Laura at her studio in Cromford and we talked about how this might be achieved.

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"We gave her the freedom to explore the garden and develop her vision for the location, the materials used, and the sculptural form.

"The use of local stone and the dry stone walling method roots ‘Natural Course’ in its environment and surroundings and its innovative construction is in keeping with the radical approach taken by so many of the other artists whose works can be seen in the garden today.”

The 105-acre garden is the product of nearly 500 years of careful cultivation.

Although some points of interest have been replaced to make way for new fashions, the garden retains many early features, including the Canal Pond, Cascade and Duke's Greenhouse.