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Wentworth Hall near Barnsley
Wentworth in May at Rhododendron
time when the grounds are opened to
the public.
 
 
 
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Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley,
South Yorkshire, was the seat of the
recreated Earls of Strafford. The
house called Stainborough was
renamed at some point by Thomas
Wentworth, Lord Raby, created Earl
of Strafford in 1711. It was still
Stainborough in Jan Kip's engraved
bird's-eye view of parterres and
avenues, 1714, and in the first
edition of Vitruvius Britannicus,
1715. The original name of
Stainborough Hall remains now, in
the form of Stainborough Castle, a
sham ruin constructed as a garden
folly.
The house was constructed in two
great campaigns, by two earls, in
remarkably different styles, each
time under unusual circumstances,
with handsome results. |
The first range was built by Thomas
Wentworth, Lord Raby, who was the
grandson of Sir William Wentworth,
younger brother of that first Earl
of Strafford who suffered during the
reign of Charles I, who to appease
Parliament permitted him to be
executed (1641) and the title
attainted.
The estate of Wentworth Woodhouse,
scarcely six miles distant, provided
a constant bitter sting, for the
Strafford fortune had passed from
the great earl's childless son to
his wife's nephew, named Watson;
only the barony of Raby went to a
blood-relation. M.J. Charlesworth
surmises that it was a feeling that
what by rights should have been his
that motivated Wentworth's purchase
of Stainborough Castle nearby and
that his efforts to surpass the
Watsons at Wentworth Woodhouse in
splendour and taste motivated the
man whom Jonathan Swift called
"proud as Hell". |
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Strafford planted avenues of trees
in great quantity in this open
countryside, and the sham castle
folly (built from 1726 and inscribed
"Rebuilt in 1730", now more ruinous
than it was at first) that he placed
at the highest site, "like an
endorsement from the past" and kept
free of trees (illustration, left)
missed by only a few years being the
first sham castle in an
English landscape garden.For its
central court where the four
original towers were named for his
four children, the earl commissioned
his portrait statue in 1730 from
Michael Rysbrack, whom James
Gibbs had been the first to employ
when he came to England;the statue
has been moved closer to the house. |
Wentworth Castle was
featured on the BBC TV show
"Restoration" in 2003, when an
attempt was made to restore the
Grade 2 Listed Victorian
Conservatory to its former glory.
Unfortunately, the Conservatory did
not win in the viewers' response;
subsequently, the Wentworth Castle
Trust took the decision in 2005 to
support the fragile structure
further with a scaffold.
Unfortunately, the building is now
in a perilous condition, and without
urgent funding the structure will be
lost forever. The restoration of the
Conservatory will cost in the region
of £2.5m.
Wentworth Castle is the only Grade 1
Listed Gardens and Parkland in South
Yorkshire; it contains twenty-six
individually listed structures. It
opened fully to visitors in 2007,
following the completion of the
first phase of restoration, which
cost £15.2m. |
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