Wentworth Woodhouse is a Grade I listed country house in the village of Wentworth, in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. The building has more than 300 rooms, with of floorspace, including of living area, and was – until it ceased to be privately owned – often listed as the largest private residence in the United Kingdom.The Sunday Times Magazine, 11 February 2007, p 19 It is surrounded by a park, and an estate of .
The original Jacobean house was rebuilt by Thomas Watson-Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Rockingham (1693–1750), and vastly expanded by his son, the 2nd Marquess, who was twice Prime Minister, and who established Wentworth Woodhouse as a Whig centre of influence.M. J. Charlesworth, "The Wentworths: Family and Political Rivalry in the English Landscape Garden" Garden History 14.2 (Autumn 1986):120–137) passim. In the 18th century, the house was inherited by the Earls Fitzwilliam and the family of the last earl owned it until 1989. It now belongs to the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust and is undergoing restoration.
History
The English Baroque, brick-built, western range of Wentworth Woodhouse was begun in 1725 by Thomas Watson-Wentworth, (after 1728 Lord Malton) after he inherited it from his father, Thomas Watson, in 1723.Baron Malton, as he then was; he was subsequently created Earl of Malton (1734) and Marquess of Rockingham (1746). It replaced the Jacobean structure that was once the home of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, whom Charles I sacrificed in 1641 to appease Parliament. The builder to whom Wentworth's grandson turned for a plan for the grand scheme that he intendedThe first block constructed already included a ground-floor gallery long (Charlesworth 1986:126). was a local builder and country architect, Ralph Tunnicliffe,Ralph Tunnicliffe (–1736) appears in several churchwardens' accounts for rebuilding and alterations to churches; just before his involvement at Wentworth Woodhouse, he had been making alterations at Wortley Hall, West Yorkshire, for Edward Wortley Montagu (Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 3rd ed. [Yale University Press] 1995, s.v. "Tunnicliffe, Ralph"); Wortley Montagu was a prominent Whig politician who moved in the same circles as Lord Malton: an obelisk honouring his wife, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stands in the rival Wentworth parkland, Wentworth Castle. who had a practice in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. Tunnicliffe was pleased enough with this culmination of his provincial practice to issue an engraving signed "R. Tunniclif, architectus"Colvin 1995, s.v "Tunnicliffe, Ralph". which must date before 1734, as it is dedicated to Baron Malton, Watson-Wentworth's earlier title. However the Baroque style was disliked by Whigs, and the new house was not admired. In , before the West Front was finished, Wentworth's grandson Thomas Watson-Wentworth commissioned Henry Flitcroft to build the East Front "extension", in fact a new and much larger house, facing the other way, southeastward. The model they settled on was Colen Campbell's Wanstead House, illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus in 1715.
That same year the rebuilding was already well underway. In a letter from the amateur architect Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby to his father-in-law Lord Carlisle of 6 June 1734, Sir Thomas reports that he found the garden front "finished" and that a start had been made on the main front: "when finished 'twill be a stupendous fabric, infinitely superior to anything we have now in England", and he adds "The whole finishing will be entirely submitted to Lord Burlington, and I know of no subject's house in Europe will have 7 such magnificent rooms so finely proportioned as these will be."Quoted in Michael I. Wilson, William Kent, Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener, 1685–1748 1984:166f. In the 20th century, Nikolaus Pevsner would agree,Pevsner, "The interiors of Wentworth Woodhouse are of a quite exceptional value... The suite along the E front from the Whistlejacket Room at the SE to the library at the NE end is not easily matched anywhere in England" (Yorkshire: The West Riding [Buildings of England] 1967:546). but the mention of the architect-earl Burlington, arbiter of architectural taste, boded ill for the provincial surveyor-builder, Tunnicliffe. It was doubtless due to Burlington's intervention that about this time, before the West Front was finished, the Earl of Malton, as he had now become, commissioned Henry Flitcroft to revise Tunnicliffe's plan there and build the East Front range. Flitcroft was Burlington's professional architectural amanuensis— "Burlington Harry" as he was called; he had prepared for the engravers the designs of Inigo Jones published by Burlington and William Kent in 1727, and in fact Kent was also called in for confabulation over Wentworth Woodhouse, mediated by Sir Thomas Robinson,Sir Thomas Robinson in another letter to Carlisle, enclosing Kent's engraved design for the Treasury Buildings in Whitehall,"'tis some satisfaction to me, as a Yorkshireman (and as I was entrusted by Lord Malton in negotiating the agreement between him and Mr. Kent), to reflect that the architect of this beautiful building [the Treasury] is from henceforward to conduct and finish his Lordship's" (quoted in Wilson 1984:166). No intervention by Kent in Flitcroft's project at Wentworth Woodhouse has been detected by historians, however. though in the event the pedestrian Flitcroft was not unseated and continued to provide designs for the house over the following decade: he revised and enlarged Tunnicliffe's provincial Baroque West Front and added wings, as well as temples and other structures in the park. Contemporary engravings of the grand public East Front give Flitcroft as architect. Flitcroft, right-hand man of the architectural dilettanti and fully occupied as well at the Royal Board of Works, could not constantly be on-site, however: Francis Bickerton, surveyor and builder of York, paid bills in 1738 and 1743.
The grand East Front is the more often illustrated. The West front, the "garden front" that Sir Thomas Robinson found to be finished in 1734, is the private front that looked onto a giardino segreto between the house front and the walled kitchen garden, intended for family enjoyment rather than social and political ambitions expressed in the East Front."as this theatre of politics unfolded over the next half-century it was commemorated by the protagonists in stone, Charlesworth remarked (1986:129). Most remnants of it were redesigned in the 19th century.Charlesworth 1986:127.
Wentworth Woodhouse was inherited by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, briefly Prime Minister in 1765–66 and again in 1782. He received Benjamin Franklin here in 1771. The architect he employed at the house was John Carr of York, who added an extra storey to parts of the East Front and provided the porticoes to the matching wings, each the equivalent of a moderately grand country house. James "Athenian" Stuart contributed designs for panels in the Pillared Hall.His portraits of William III and George II, commissioned by Rockingham, have not been traced: Martin Hopkinson, "A Portrait by James 'Athenian' Stuart" The Burlington Magazine 132 No. 1052 (November 1990:794–795) p. 794. The Whistlejacket Room was named for George Stubbs' portrait that hung in it of Whistlejacket, one of the most famous racehorses of all time.Dated by Ellis K. Waterhouse, "Lord Fitzwilliam's Sporting Pictures by Stubbs" The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 No. 521 (August 1946:197, 199). The additions were completed in 1772. The second Marquess envisaged a sculpture gallery at the house, which never came to fruition; four marbles by Joseph Nollekens were carried out to his commission, in expectation of the gallery; the Diana, signed and dated 1778, is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Juno, Venus and Minerva, grouped with a Roman antique marble of Paris, are at the J. Paul Getty Museum.Paul Williamson, "Acquisitions of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986–1991: Supplement" The Burlington Magazine 133 No. 1065 (December 1991:876–880) p. 879, fig. xi. Wentworth Woodhouse, with all its contents, subsequently passed to the Marquess's sister, Anne, who had married William Fitzwilliam, 3rd Earl Fitzwilliam, and became the property of the Fitzwilliam family.
Royal visit of 1912 King George V and Queen Mary visited south Yorkshire from 8 to 12 July 1912 and stayed at Wentworth Woodhouse for four days. The house party consisted of a large number of guests, including: Cosmo Gordon Lang, the then-Archbishop of York; Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood and his wife Florence; Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry; Lawrence Dundas, 1st Marquess of Zetland and Lady Zetland; Aldred Lumley, 10th Earl of Scarbrough and Lady Scarbrough; the William Parsons, 5th Earl of Rosse and Lady Rosse; Admiral Lord Charles Beresford and Lady Mina Beresford; Walter Long and Lady Doreen Long; and Lord Helmsley and Lady Helmsley.
The royal visit concluded on the evening of 11 July with a torchlight tattoo by miners, and a musical programme by members of the Sheffield Musical Union and the Wentworth Choral Society. A crowd of 25,000 gathered on the lawn to witness the King and Queen on the balcony of the portico, from which the King gave a speech.
Intelligence connection in the Second World War During the Second World War, the house served as Training Depot and Headquarters of the Intelligence Corps, although by 1945 conditions for trainee intelligence soldiers had deteriorated so far that questions were asked in the House of Commons. Some of the training involved motorcycle dispatch rider skills, as Intelligence Corps personnel often used motorcycles. The grounds of the house and surrounding road network were used as motorcycle training areas.
Lease to Lady Mabel College The Ministry of Health attempted to requisition the house as "housing for homeless industrial families". To prevent this, the 7th Earl attempted to donate the house to the National Trust, but the Trust declined to take it. In the end, Lady Mabel Fitzwilliam, sister of the 7th Earl and a local alderman, brokered a deal whereby the West Riding County Council leased most of the house for an educational establishment, leaving forty rooms as a family apartment.Bailey 2007: 397–402. Thus, from 1949 to 1979, the house was home to the Lady Mabel College of Physical Education, which trained female physical education teachers. The college later merged with Sheffield City Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University), which eventually gave up the lease in 1988 as a result of high maintenance costs.Bailey 2007: 449.
Sale by the Fitzwilliam family By 1989, Wentworth Woodhouse was in a poor state of repair. With the polytechnic no longer a tenant, and with the family no longer requiring the house, the family trustees decided to sell it and the surrounding it, but retained the Wentworth Estate's of land. The house was bought by locally born businessman Wensley Grosvenor Haydon-Baillie, who started a programme of restoration, but a business failure saw it repossessed by a Swiss bank and put back on the market in 1998.Bailey 2007:451. Clifford Newbold (July 1926 – April 2015),Rotherham Advertiser, 6 May 2015 an architect from Highgate, bought it for something over £1.5 million. Newbold progressed with a programme of renovation and restoration, as described in Country Life magazine dated 17 and 24 February 2010. The surrounding parkland is owned by the Wentworth Estates.