Wentworth Castle

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Wentworth Castle: Horace Walpole found that the south facade, completed in 1764, proved to be a sign of “the most perfect taste in architecture”.

Wentworth Castle is a country house in Stainborough at Barnsley in the English administrative unit South Yorkshire . Listed by English Heritage as a Grade I Historic Building, it was formerly the seat of the Earls of Strafford . Today it is home to the Northern College for Residential and Community Education .

When Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby , who later became the Earl of Strafford, bought the property in 1711, it was an older country house. In Jan Kip's engraving of the Parterres and Avenues from a bird's eye view from 1714, the property was still called Stainborough , as was the case in the first edition of Vitruvius Britannicus from 1715. The name was not changed until 1731. The original name Stainborough Castle now refers to an artificial ruin on the property, which was built as Folly .

The property has been under the management of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust since 2001 and is open to the public every day of the year. The gardens of the country house were restored at the beginning of the 21st century and are also open to the public.

history

The first country house called Cutler House was built for Sir Gervase Cutler (born 1640) in 1670. Sir Gervase then sold the property to Thomas Wentworth, who was later named 1st Earl of Strafford. The house was rebuilt in two stages, by two earls, in remarkably different styles, each time under unusual circumstances.

First construction phase

East facade of Stainborough Castle in Vitruvius Britannicus , Edition I (1715)

The first phase of the renovation of the original country house was commissioned by Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby, around 1711. He was the grandson of Sir William Wentworth , father of Thomas Wentworth , 1st Earl of Strafford (first appointment). Baron Raby himself was appointed 1st Earl of Strafford (second appointment) in 1711.

The Wentworth Woodhouse estate , which he thought would have been his by birth, was barely five miles away and was a permanent thorn in the Baron's flesh. The Strafford's possessions had fallen from William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford , the childless son of the first Earl, to his wife's nephew, Thomas Watson ; only the title of Baron Raby had gone to a blood relative. MJ Charlesworth suspects that the feeling that he should have owned the grand mansion led Thomas Wentworth to buy nearby Stainborough Castle and that his efforts to outdo the Watson of Wentworth Woodhouse in splendor and taste motivated the man the Jonathan Swift called "proud as hell."

Wentworth was a soldier in the service of William III. who made him Colonel of the Dragoons. He was sent by Queen Anne from 1706 to 1711 as ambassador to Prussia and on his return to Great Britain in the revival of the Earldom appointed Viscount Wentworth and Earl of Strafford in the British aristocracy. He was then sent to represent the United Kingdom in negotiations that led to the Peace of Utrecht and was subsequently cited by a parliamentary commission. With the death of Queen Anne, he and his Tories were permanently disempowered. Wentworth, representing a clan-like old Yorkshire family, needed a large house in keeping with the revitalized Wentworths' holdings. He spent his retirement completing Wentworth Castle and designing the landscaped gardens.

He had interrupted his stay in Berlin in the summer of 1708 to buy Stainborough Castle, only to return to Berlin armed with sufficient specifications of the property to commission the military architect Johann von Bodt , who had recently spent a few years in England and which he desired Drew plans. Wentworth was in Italy in 1709 buying paintings for his future home. "I believe in my paintings very much," he said with satisfaction, "They are all intended for Yorkshire and I hope to have a better collection there than Mr Watson." To exhibit them you needed a large gallery, James Gibbs probably drew the plans, since a contract for a wooden paneling "as desined by Mr Gibbs" (original: "desined", not, as correctly in English, "designed"; German: as drawn) is still in the Wentworths' papers today in the British Library (Add. Mss 22329, folio 128). The gallery was completed in 1724. There are plans, presumably by Bodt, for an elevation and a partial floor plan showing the gallery at Wentworth Castle, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (E.307-1937), in an album of various drawings that belonged to William Talman's son John. The gallery is 54 meters long, 7.2 meters wide and 9 meters high, divided into three sections by veined Corinthian marble columns with gilded capitals and with corresponding pillars against protruding yokes. In the resulting spaces four marble copies of Roman statues on pillar plates were preserved until the 20th century. In March / April 1714, construction had progressed sufficiently that the correspondence between Lord Strafford and William Thornton that has survived to this day could deal with the installation of the window panes in the frames: the alternatives would be either four-pane wide windows, as is the case in the best Made houses, Thornton assured the earl, that slug panes could be used for, or three-pane windows that would require the use of flat glass . Lord Strafford chose the latter. The results, largely monitored remotely by letter, are unprecedented in the UK. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner found the east wing "with a palatial sheen, which is unusual in England". The grand suite of showrooms stretched from the room at the north end with a ceiling painting of the Allegory of Abundance to the room at the south end with one of the Allegory of Glory .

Bodt's use of grand pillar arrangements at the front and other details suggested to John Harris that Bodt, who was in England in the 1690s, had access to William Talman's drawings . Talman was the architect of Chatsworth House , which is considered England's first truly baroque mansion. Indeed, there are similarities between the east facade of Wentworth Castle and the facades of Chatsworth House. Both have an exquisitely continental baroque front facade. Wentworth Castle has been described as "a remarkable and almost unique example of Franco-Prussian architecture in Georgian England". The east facade was built on a raised terrace, from which gravel ramps lead down, flanking a grotto and ending in an axial view, framed by double avenues of trees to a formal, wrought-iron gate, which can be seen in Jan Kip's engraving from 1714 which - if it no longer depicts plan as reality - shows arranged parterres to the west of the house and an exedra on the rising ground behind it, all details that also appear in Britannia Illustrata (1730). An engraving by Thomas Badeslade from around 1750 still shows formal details grouped around Bodt's facade, enclosed in gravel driveways wide enough for a four-horse carriage. The regular plantings of trees in a bosket arrangement have already grown in this representation: their edges are irregular and the straight paths break through them. All of this was removed at the behest of the second earl after the middle of the century in favor of a wavy, “naturalistic” landscape in the style of Capability Brown .

Landscaping of the first earl

Stainborough Castle , an early example (completed 1730) of a man-made ruin as an eye catcher in the landscape; two of the four towers have been preserved to this day.

Lord Strafford had tree avenues laid out in large numbers in this open landscape and the artificial ruin (built from 1726 and labeled "rebuilt 1730", today even more ruinous than originally), which was built at the highest point "like a confirmation from the past" and kept free of trees, was created just a few years after the first artificial ruin in an English country garden . For the central courtyard of the ruins, where the four original towers were named after his four children, the Earl commissioned a portrait statue of him from John Michael Rysbrack in 1730 , whom John Gibbs first hired when he came to England. The statue was placed closer to the country house.

As a staunch Tory, Lord Strafford remained in political cover for the rest of his life during the reign of Walpoles Whigs . In 1736 an obelisk was erected in memory of Queen Anne and the drawing room of the house was renamed Queen Anne's Sitting Room until modern times . Gradually, more landscape details were added, so that today 26 buildings are listed in the remaining parkland.

The second earl at Wentworth Castle

The first earl died in 1739 and his son succeeded him. William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1722-1791) , has an entry in Colvin's Biographical Dictionary of British Architects as the architect of the beautiful neo-Palladian suite of buildings built between 1759 and 1764 at Wentworth Castle. He married a daughter of John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll , and spent a year on the Grand Tour trying to improve his sense of taste; he shied away from political life. In Wentworth Castle he had John Platt (1728–1810) as a builder and Charles Ross (–1770/1775) as the maker of the workshop drawings and “superintendent”. Ross was a builder and carpenter from London who had worked under the Palladian architect Matthew Brettingham on Lord Strafford's London house at 5 St. James's Square from 1748–1749 . With his proven expertise in London, Ross no doubt recommended himself to the Earl for his construction campaign in Yorkshire. Wentworth Castle was well known, as Lord Verulam put it in 1768: "Lord Strafford himself was his own architect and inventor of everything." Even in his London home, Walpole tells us, "he chose all the ornaments himself".

Horace Walpole presents Wentworth Castle as an example of perfect integration into the property, the landscape and even the harmony of the stone:

If a model is sought of the most perfect taste in architecture, where grace softens dignity, and lightness attempers magnificence (...) where the position is the most happy, and even the color of the stone the most harmonious; the virtuoso should be directed to the new front of Wentworth-castle: the result of the same judgment that had before distributed so many beauties over that domain and called from wood, water, hills, prospects, and buildings, a compendium of picturesque nature , improved by the chastity of art. (dt .: If you are looking for an example of perfektesten taste in architecture, where grace will blur the dignity and ease tempers the grandeur, (...) where the situation in the most cheerful and even the color of the stone on the most harmonious: The connoisseur should lead to the new front facade of Wentworth Castle (completed 1764): (this is) the result of the same assessment that has previously spread so many beauties over this area and is evoked by forest, water, hills, views and buildings, a compendium more picturesque Nature enhanced by the purity of art. )

Later story

Print of the country house from the beginning of the 19th century with east and south facades

With the dissolution of the Earldom after the death of the 3rd Earl in 1799, the huge family estate was divided into three parts. One part each went to the three daughters of the 1st Earl . Wentworth Castle remained in the hands of Lady Henrietta Vernon's grandson Frederic Vernon (of Hilton Hall in Staffordshire ), of whom William, 4th Earl FitzWilliam and Walter Spencer-Stanhope were trustees . Frederick Vernon added “Wentworth” to his surname and took over the property in 1816. Between 1820 and 1840 the old Jacob's Chapel was replaced by the current building and the windows of the baroque wing were opened to the floor on both sides of the entrance hall. Frederick Vernon-Wentworth also merged two rooms on the ground floor to form what is now the “Blue Room”. In July 1838, a bad hailstorm severely damaged the lantern and windows of the house, as did the greenhouses in the enclosed gardens. This damage pale in comparison to the disaster in the nearby Huskar coal mine, where 26 young miners drowned due to flooding as a result of the hailstorm. In May 1853, a bad blizzard caused great damage, particularly to the trees in the gardens, some of which were already growing, some of them rare species from America that had been planted by the 1st and 2nd Earl. Frederick Vernon-Wentworth was succeeded in 1885 by his son Thomas , who had the iron-framed greenhouse and electrical lighting installed in March of the following year. The Victorian wing also dates from this decade and its construction allowed the Vernon-Wentworths to entertain the young Duke of Clarence and his entourage for the winters of 1887 and 1889. Then the estate was inherited by Thomas' eldest son, Captain Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth , who was a member of Parliament for Brighton in 1902 . The captain preferred his property in Suffolk and therefore had most of the valuable items from Wentworth Castle auctioned off after the First World War . The paintings were auctioned at Christie's on November 13, 1919 . Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, who had no direct descendants, sold the house and gardens to the Barnsley Corporation in 1948 , while the remaining properties in Yorkshire, Suffolk and Scotland fell to a distant cousin. The remaining interior of Wentworth Castle was sold in a "garage sale" (by Lancaster & Sons , June 1948). The house became a teacher training center, Wentworth Castle College of Education , which operated until 1978. Then the house was used by the Northern College for Residential and Community Education . Wentworth Castle was featured in The Country House in Danger exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum . The magnificent landscaped garden that Walpole had so praised in 1780 was described as "destroyed and ruined" in 1986, and the winding river that the 2nd Earl had dug in the 1730s as a result of muddy ponds.

Wentworth Castle has the only parkland gardens in South Yorkshire listed as Grade I Gardens. The Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust was established as a not-for-profit institution in 2002 “to undertake a gradual program of restoration and development work that will benefit the public by giving them largely free access to parkland, gardens and historic buildings enable and preserve these important historical sites for future generations. ”Today, the landscaped garden is gradually being restored by the trust. The restoration of the rotunda was completed in 2010; the parkland was turned back into a deer park. The restoration of the serpentine is the subject of a future project that will be carried out depending on the funds available.

The property was fully opened to visitors in 2007 after completing the first phase of restoration, which cost £ 15.2 million. The gardens at Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park are open 7 days a week all year round (except December 25th and 26th). Information for visitors, groups and schools as well as the latest information on the progress of the restoration project can be found on the Trust's website. Guided tours in the country house are available by appointment.

Wentworth Castle was featured on the BBC television series Restoration in 2003 . It called for the restoration of the historical building II *. Grades listed Victorian greenhouse to its former glory, but the audience did not get involved to the extent desired. As a result, the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust decided in 2005 to have scaffolding put up on the fragile building to prevent its complete collapse. The Trust eventually managed to raise £ 3.7m in donations for this purpose by 2011. Restoration began in 2012 with financial support from English Heritage , the Country Houses Foundation , the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the European Regional Development Fund . The Trust completed the restoration of the fragile Victorian glass house on October 7, 2013 and opened it to the public the following day.

Individual references and comments

  1. ↑ Jonathan Swift: Journal to Stella , described in: MJ Charlesworth: The Wentworths: Family and Political Rivalry in the English Landscape Garden in Garden History . Issue 14.2 (autumn 1986). P. 120.
  2. ↑ a b Bodt or Bott, Johannes von, (1670-1745) in Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, Yale 1995.
  3. ^ A b c letter, quoted by Charlesworth 1986. pp. 120, 123, 129.
  4. ↑ Howard Colvin: Gibbs, James . 1995. Terry Friedman: James Gibbs . 1984. pp. 123-125, 321-322, plate 124.
  5. ↑ Lawrence Whistler in `` Country Life '', No. 92 (1952). P. 1650, and John Harris in Architectural Review , July 1961, attributed the drawings containing notes in other ink ( WT del. Et inv. ) To William Talman. Margaret Winney classified them under attributed drawings for whose attribution there is insufficient evidence and attributed them to Bodt because they were too competent and too French for Talman. (See Margaret Winney: William Talman in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes . Issue 18.1-2 (January 1955. pp. 136-137, Figures 39 a + b). Terry Friedeman in particular followed her attribution in The English Appreciation of Italian Decorations in The Burlington Magazine , Issue 117, No. 873, Special Issue on French Neoclassicism, December 1975, p. 846, Note 27.
  6. ↑ Horace Walpole, who could not praise the house and property enough, commented on the content of the gallery: "(...) but four modern statues and some bad portraits (...)" (led by Rosalys Coope: The Gallery in England: Names and Meanings in Architectural History , Issue 27, Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies in Architectural History ). (See Howard Colvin (1984). p. 450.)
  7. ↑ Hentie Louw, Robert Crayford: A Constructional History of the Sash Window, c. 1670-c. 1725 (Part 2) in Architectural History . Volume 42 (1999). P. 188.
  8. ↑ Robert Benson, Lord Bingley , the Tory politician and amateur architect, may have “overseen” the project in a certain way (see Benson, Robert, Lord Bingley in Colvin (1955)).
  9. ↑ a b Kenneth Lemmon: Wentworth Castle: A Forgotten Landscape in Garden History . Issue 3.3 (summer 1975). Pp. 52-53.
  10. ↑ There is no evidence that Capability Brown worked at Wentworth Castle.
  11. ↑ Charlesworth states that this man-made ruin was preceded only by Sir John Vanbrugh's long bastion wall in Castle Howard and Alfred's Tower in Cirencester Park by Lord Strafford's cousin, Lord Bathurst , which could have been inspirations for Stainborough Castle.
  12. ↑ MI Webb: Michael Rysbrack, c. 1730 in Rupert Gunnis: Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 . Revised edition (1954).
  13. ↑ In 1722 he was incriminated by James Stuart , the “Old Pretender”, with the senseless title “Duke of Strafford”.
  14. ↑ In 1740 Argyll withdrew from the political arena with a shudder.
  15. ↑ Platt, a builder and stonemason (he was responsible for the sculptures in the ornamental gable (1762)) was a member of a dynasty of builders with a depot in Rotherham , South Yorkshire. (Colvin (1995): Platt ).
  16. ^ Ross, Charles in Howard Colvin: A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects . 3. Edition. Yale University Press, Yale 1995.
  17. ↑ Howard Colvin ( Wentworth, William, 2nd Earl of Strafford ) notes that Walpole and William Bray ( Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire , 2nd ed. (1783), p. 249 (mentioned in Colvin)) acknowledge Strafford's responsibility.
  18. ↑ Horace Walpole: The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening . 1780.
  19. ↑ including the Young Knight by Vittore Carpaccio , who mostly hung around unnoticed in the collection, with an attribution to Dürer . (Alec Martin: The Young Knight by Carpaccio in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs . Issue 44. No. 251 (February 1924). Pp. 56, 58-59).
  20. ↑ Vernon-Wentworth Muniments . In: Access to Archives . National Archives. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  21. ^ A b Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park estate . Rotherham Web. ( Memento of the original of September 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 4, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rotherhamweb.co.uk
  22. ↑ a b The Victorian Conservatory . Wentworth Castle Gardens. Retrieved August 5, 2015
  23. ^ Victorian Conservatory Runner-Up In Prestigious Awards . Wearebarnsley.com. Retrieved August 5, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Wentworth Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Stainborough Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 53 ° 31 '27.5 "  N , 1 ° 31' 7.7"  W.