The Duke of Devonshire on Chatsworth and its art galleries

From a distance, Chatsworth house appears timeless. The visitor's approach today is as it has always been: a journey through gently sloping Derbyshire countryside and acres of historic parkland before the house itself comes into view. At this point (and excepting the bedraggled remains of the annual country fair) there is little evidence of the 21st century - or the grand initiatives of Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th and current Duke of Devonshire.

Slideshow: Stately progress

"What people come to see here is the landscape, that's the principle reason. We know that from our market research," the duke says later, sounding more CEO than aristo. "It gives the impression, quite forcefully, that it's never changed, but of course it's changing all the time."

Some of the most recent and ambitious changes have come as the result of the nearing £20m restoration project that the duke began in 2007, three years after he inherited Chatsworth and the title from his father, and the exterior of the house is among the many triumphs of the scheme. Now that the sandstone has been restored to a soft, pale yellow, and the window frames and finials have been regilded in 24-carat gold, the entire building appears to shimmer in the late summer sun.

Inside, there has been an overhaul of the state rooms and more space created for the display of contemporary art. But our meeting begins in the library, a room cut off from the public route that has remained largely unchanged for the past half-century.

Leather-bound books line the back walls, a small table is laid with bottles of gins and mixers, and there are stunning views into the garden towards the water cascade. There are amusing details too: a secret door leading to the gallery level is disguised by spines with joke titles (Consenting Adults by Abel N Willing, Minor Rodents by Aygood-Mausser) suggested by the late Patrick Leigh Fermor, a friend of the family. The space has a more relaxed feel than the formal rooms, but the duke has no time for small pleasantries: the tone is slick, corporate and to the point.

Of course, a somewhat hard-nosed approach has been crucial to the making of modern Chatsworth. "When my parents, particularly my father, decided to move back here in 1956 that was a completely counter-intuitive decision and against the advice of a lot of his contemporaries, and particularly older people, who felt that this sort of place had had it," the duke says. "They thought my parents were pretty mad to move in, which probably only encouraged them."

The 11th Duke of Devonshire inherited the house unexpectedly, after the death of his elder brother during the second world war. Together with his wife, Deborah, (who, at the age of 93, is the last surviving Mitford sister), he began work in the shadow of 80 per cent capital taxes. It was a case of adapt or die. While many of the county's great houses fell into ruin in the postwar years, the duke and duchess used their business sense to transform Chatsworth, over time improving the upkeep of the house and, in 1981, establishing a trust to ensure its long-term survival.

"I remember [the house] being dank and rather empty and echoey," the duke says. "By the time we moved in, I was away at boarding school, and we were nearly always in Ireland in the Easter holidays, so I was here quite little, and I didn't get to know it well, from an intellectual point of view, until I came back to live here." The current duke and duchess prefer to present themselves as mere cogs in a large machine (a recent BBC documentary on Chatsworth showed them joining litter-pickers around the park) and he is keen to point out the value and importance of the staff and the visiting public, and to downplay his own impact on the house. Still, out of season, the private and public spaces are less strictly defined.

The duke says his grandchildren slept in some of the formal bedrooms last Christmas. "They're not normally used ... because there's only one bathroom, but they could be ... as long as people got up reasonably early and the bed was made they could be open to visitors at 11 o'clock."

One of the duke's main interests, professionally and privately, is contemporary art, and he is keen to show off some of the latest galleries at Chatsworth, as well as examples of new restoration work. He sets off at speed, stopping briefly when questioned at the end of the library to explain a bullet lodged in one of the leather-topped tables - the result, he says, of "friendly fire" from soldiers training in moorland above the house during the second world war.

He rushes through the formal dining-room, past the famous sculpture gallery, and across a red rope into a suite of modern galleries housed in a former staff flat. As deputy chairman of Sotheby's, the duke has invited the auction house to hold a number of exhibitions at the house, and the latest of these, titled Modern Makers, is a selling show of contemporary craft. As the duke paces around the exhibits, he appears to thaw slightly, buoyed by an enthusiasm for the works in situ. "That will excite anybody, won't it?" he says, delighted with Joseph Walsh's elaborate Enignum Canopy Bed.

Although the house and garden have played host to many sculptural exhibits, "in some ways [craft] is more interesting to us than sculpture," the duke says, "partly because it's easier to incorporate it in the house."

En route to another area of restoration, we pass the Oak Staircase surrounded by portraits and topped with a light-filled dome designed by Jeffry Wyatville in about 1832. "My great grandmother had blocked it up," he says, " ... so we put it back to what Wyatville had done. And we needed somewhere to put these family portraits ... so we put them all on one wall and dealt with them like that, because they're not the most gripping things to look at."

The duke hurries along a corridor dedicated to items associated with Georgiana, wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, and one of Chatsworth's most famous chatelaines. "Everything in here was either bought by her, or loved by her," he says, gesturing towards the cabinets of crystals and minerals, portraits and items of furniture. "So this is her then contemporary furniture, made by a man called Herve. That was what was modern and up to date, and that's fine - that's a very nice chair," he says, pointing, "perfectly comfortable, but why get stuck there?"

Along the Chapel Corridor, the duke stops to point out an installation of ceramics by Edmund de Waal, and the new fireplaces designed by Peter Inskip, lead architect of the restoration scheme. "[He] wanted it to look traditional but he turned the bolection through 90 degrees ... it's a way of doing something old in a new way."

The last stop of the tour is the room known as The Chapel, although it is no longer consecrated. "Our last few grandchildren were christened there. One of my father's sisters got married there too, so it can be used for services but we can do things in there which you wouldn't do in a religious space." At present the altar is occupied by Damien Hirst's life-size bronze of St Bartholomew, scissors in one hand, flayed skin in other. The surrounding lime wood panels, carved in extraordinary detail by Samuel Watson in the late 17th century, constitute the duke's next project.

"I'm absolutely certain that A, they shouldn't be the same colour as the rest of the panelling, and, B, they shouldn't be covered in shiny varnish," he says. "They should probably be very nearly white, which would make them stand out much more. So we will investigate all that."

As the duke rushes off to the next meeting of the day, he admits he is "always thinking about changing things, or new things arriving, or how things might work differently," in and around the house, adding with studied understatement, "it's a huge privilege to be a little part of it."

'Modern Makers' runs from September 18 to December 23

Laura Battle is deputy editor of House & Home

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Favourite thing

It is perhaps not surprising that the duke selects a piece of contemporary furniture as his favourite object, although, he adds, "if you ask me again in a month's time I might say something else." This writing desk, in glossy, lipstickred lacquer, has nothing to do with the current exhibitions, he says. The duke bought it from its designers, Neil and Annabel McCarthy of Nest Design, at an exhibition in New York. "They sold about four or five of them. It just seems to have a lovely line to it."

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