Chatsworth caravan park set to reopen under new ownership

A caravan park situated in the corner of the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire is reopening next month under new ownership.

The Chatsworth Caravan and Motorhome Park had been part of the Caravan and Motorhome Club’s network.

But the club closed down its operations on 20 September, and since then work has started on minor reservations before the motorhome site reopens on 1 November, when it will be under the management of Chatsworth Escapes.

That’s the part of the Chatsworth Trust that already runs a holiday cottage business on the estate.

The caravan park, which could be of interest to those who enjoy winter motorhoming, is a useful location for anyone interested in visiting Chatsworth – home to the Dukes of Devonshire for many centuries and said to be the inspiration for Mr Darcy’s house Pemberley in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, among other things.

Both the 1995 BBC dramatisation of the novel and the 2008 film version with Keira Knightley used Chatsworth as a backdrop.

The house is just a ten-minute walk across the estate from the back of the caravan park.

Under the new management, anyone who stays at the caravan park will be able to buy multi-entry tickets to the house and gardens at a special rate, although these tickets do not cover events such as the International Horse Trials and the Country Fair.

The caravan park has a total of 120 hard standing pitches, including 26 super pitches. However, your size of motorhome could play a part here, as partly because of the long single track entranceway, bookings are limited to motorhomes less than 8.5m long.

Anyone still wanting to use a Caravan Club site in the area can visit the club’s Lickpenny Matlock site, some 14 miles away.

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PeterBaber

Peter Baber is Reviews Editor of Practical Motorhome. He has been reviewing motorhomes for over a decade now. Before that he had a 20-year career in business journalism which saw him edit a wide variety of magazines, and launch a few too, including one that won an award. Although he enjoyed that, he always knew he wanted to write about one of his biggest passions, a passion that he first picked up when his parents took him half way around Australia in a VW campervan when he was eight. Peter reports on all the new models that make it to dealer forecourts each season, giving his judgement online and in magazine reviews. He also writes many travel articles for the magazine, having taken motorhomes twice to France and all over the UK in the past three years. When he is not doing that, he likes to throw the odd pot or two (he is part of a pottery studio near where he lives and has just started selling his wares), bake the odd cake, or get on with finishing his novel.