Emperor Fountain, Chatsworth

Word came that Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia, might visit Chatsworth in 1844. The 6th Duke of Devonshire wanted to greet him with a fountain taller than the one at Peterhof, the Tsar's palace, and put the engineering skills of his head gardener, Joseph Paxton, to work. The new fountain took the place of the Great Fountain, put in by the 1st Duke when the Canal Pond was made in the early eighteenth century.

Paxton created the fountain in 1843-1844. The Tsar never came to Chatsworth, yet the fountain kept his name. Its jet is on record at 90 m. In 2014 two new nozzles, the second slightly narrower, and a new debris grid at Emperor Lake, which feeds the fountain, made it possible to reach 60 m.

The fountain and its pair of sculptures have been Grade II listed since 19 June 1987; the garden and park of Chatsworth are on the Register of Parks and Gardens at Grade I.

The fountain stands at the north end of the Canal Pond. In the middle of a heap of boulders laid out irregularly, an iron pipe topped with a nozzle sends up the jet. The work is in sandstone and ashlar, and two sandstone sculptures of reclining figures go with it.

The water comes from Emperor Lake, an eight-acre (about 3.2 ha) lake fed by streams that gather rain falling on the high ground. An iron pipe 40 cm wide carries the water down 122 m to the fountain, and in places the builders had to cut trenches up to 4.5 m deep in the rock to keep the gradient.

The Emperor Fountain is one of the waterworks in the garden at Chatsworth, together with the Cascade and the Willow Tree Fountain.

The fountain lies inside the garden, which is visited with a day ticket that also covers the house, the farmyard and the adventure playground, on sale from mid March to early January. The water features play every day when the level of the lakes that feed them by gravity allows; their times can change after rain.

The public entrance is on the B6012, beyond Baslow; the car park and the bus stop are close to the house and garden entrances.