Climate, comfort, and architecture in Elizabethan England: an environmental study of Hardwick Hall

Abstract

Hardwick Hall is one of the great houses of Elizabethan England. It has been widely researched in terms of its architectural form, construction, and iconography. This article, which builds upon earlier research, explores the internal environment of the house as it would have been experienced by its first occupants at the end of the sixteenth century. It shows that the form, construction, and internal planning of the house were consciously and precisely organised to provide a comfortable internal environment in the often severe climate of late sixteenth-century England. The climate of the ‘Little Ice Age’ is described from sources in climate history and cultural observation, and the Elizabethan concept of comfort is outlined with reference to accounts of contemporary events and to studies in costume history. The article focuses on five significant spaces within the house to reconstruct their historic environments with reference to archival sources on Hardwick and to the results of a programme of physical monitoring of the thermal environment in the house, carried out by the authors between July 2018 and August 2019. Our aim is to show how the combination of architectural history and building science allows us to reach a deeper cultural interpretation of the historic environment.