'', c.1768 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 in 1723. 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 intended was a local builder and country architect, Ralph Tunnicliffe, 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" which must date before 1734, as it is dedicated to Baron Malton, Watson-Wentworth's earlier title. In the 20th century,
Nikolaus Pevsner would agree, 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, 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. Most remnants of it were redesigned in the 19th century. 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. The Whistlejacket Room was named for
George Stubbs' portrait that hung in it of
Whistlejacket, one of the most famous racehorses of all time. 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. Wentworth Woodhouse, with all its contents, subsequently passed to the family of the Marquess's sister,
the Earls Fitzwilliam.
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. 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.
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. Clifford Newbold (July 1926 – April 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. In 2014, the house was informally offered for sale by Newbold, with no price specified, but a figure of around £7 million was thought to be sought according to
The Times. The house was reported to need works of around £40 million. Following Newbold's death, the house was advertised for sale in May 2015 via
Savills with an asking price of £8 million. In February 2016, it was sold to the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust (WWPT) for £7 million after a potential sale to the Hong Kong-based Lake House Group fell through. On 23 November 2016, in the
United Kingdom Chancellor's budget statement of November 2016, it was announced that the Trust was to receive a grant of £7.6 million for restoration work; the Chancellor
Philip Hammond noted a claim that the property had been
Jane Austen's inspiration for
Pemberley in her novel
Pride and Prejudice. It was thought that there might have been a connection to the house because Austen uses the name Fitzwilliam in her novel, but following the Chancellor's Autumn Statement the
Jane Austen Society dismissed the likelihood, given the absence of any evidence that she had visited the estate. His wife,
Helena de Chair, is the only surviving child of
Lady Juliet Tadgell, the last Fitzwilliam family owner of the house and the owner of the surrounding estate. As of 2022, the National Trust was working in partnership with the WWPT to support their ambitions for the site as a visitor attraction; the Trust does not own the property. ==Coal mining on the estate==