As the researcher on the 1972 BBC1 series Mistress of Hardwick, which recreated life inside the Countess of Shrewsbury's magnificent Elizabethan mansion, I was intrigued by Lucy Worsley's suggestion that we should "Live like Bess of Hardwick" (13 April) in order to help adapt to climate change and the loss of oil and other resources. While it's true that Bess was at times maternally generous to her staff, many of whom lived in close proximity within the household, it's misleading to present that way of life as in any way a model for modern times.
Of course it would be lovely to imagine some sort of mutually supportive, organic community living in such a beautiful building. But the truth is that it was a steeply hierarchical and authoritarian society, in which most people had few rights but many duties, with little or no scope for dissent.
Nor was the house energy efficient, being notoriously cold, buffeted by the cold winds of the Peak District, made worse by Bess's insistence on a spectacular number of large windows. It's no surprise that Bess's bed had to be piled high with quilts, three pairs of fustian blankets and six woollen blankets – which I suppose we may have to do when things get really bad.
Giles Oakley
London
• If our ancestors could plan and design their lives so well, how come they were so stupid as to have lives that were "smelly, cold, dirty and uncomfortable"? The answer is that they did not; they tried to avoid any such thing as far as was possible at the time. Like us, they preferred being fragrant, warm, clean and comfortable. There have been a lot of myths being peddled recently about filth in the past – particularly in Dan Snow's otherwise excellent Filthy City programmes – which are 50 years out of date. This was the sort of thing 19th-century historians liked to congratulate themselves about, and modern historians thought they had got rid of. It seems instead that "filthiness" has attained the status of a folk myth again.
Virginia Smith
London
• Lucy Worsley makes some interesting points. In my parish, Bess of Hardwick built, according to the age-old rhyme, "Hardwick Hall – more glass than wall".
Rev Tony Bell
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
• Simon Jenkins (This cult of the ruin, 15 April) calls Hardwick an "effete fantasy". I wish we could hear him explain that to Bess of Hardwick. He would be damn lucky to keep his ears!
Stewart Easton
London