Treading The Boards Of Chatsworth

Catherine Roth discovers the unique theatre group which calls Chatsworth its home

- Catherine Roth

A talented theatre group has been treading the boards at Chatsworth House for well over a decade. With a reputation for quality drama, the Chatsworth Players describe themselves as an amateur group with professional aspirations.

Chatsworth’s small but elaborately decorated theatre is perfect for staging classics that have included A Christmas Carol, Gaslight, Hobson’s Choice, The Importance of Being Earnest, Jane Eyre, A Man for All Seasons, and Pygmalion. The Chatsworth Players usually perform two shows a year – one in June and the other in October, when they also tour to local villages.

Lindsay Jackson, Chair of the Chatsworth Players, has directed its most recent plays, but it was her mother, Sylvia Jackson – who sadly died earlier this year from Covid-19 – who founded the theatre group after she moved to Bakewell in 2005.

Sylvia, daughter of a Derbyshire miner and a classically trained singer, studied at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London and went on to appear in many West End productions before choosing family life and a teaching career back in Derbyshire. ‘My mum was a working-class northern lass,’ says Lindsay. ‘To go to a drama school for well-to-do middle-class southerners in the 1950s was quite ground-breaking.’