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English Heritage is responsible for the care and presentation of an outstanding national collection of fine and decorative art, social history and archaeological artefacts from over 400 historic properties across England.
The seventeenth-century castle at Bolsover was completed by William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle and passed by the Duke of Portland to English Heritage in 1945.
The contents of the roofless terrace range and the Little Castle were dispersed by the eighteenth century, however, wall paintings that are contemporary with the building of the Little Castle remain in situ in the Anteroom, Hall and Star Chamber.
A set of twelve paintings of ten Roman emperors and two empresses, painted in oil on canvas belonging to English Heritage hang in the Little Castle. The paintings are seventeenth-century copies of originals by Titian (from engravings by Aegidious Sadeler) that belonged to Charles I. William Cavendish may have seen them hanging at St James’s Palace and commissioned a set for his own house, as they were hanging at his principal residence of Welbeck Abbey in 1695, being moved to Bolsover in the eighteenth century.