Wentworth Woodhouse

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East front of Wentworth Woodhouse
East front of Wentworth Woodhouse 2008
Coat of arms of the Watsons, Earls of Rockingham: silver, three golden crescents on a blue angle between three black merlettes . Motto: “Mea Gloria Fides” (“Trust my fame”), depicted in large Roman capital letters on the frieze of the classic pediment by Wentworth Woodhouse.

Wentworth Woodhouse is a country house in the village of Wentworth in Rotherham in the English administrative unit South Yorkshire . Listed by English Heritage as a Grade I Historic Building, it served as "one of the great Whig Palaces." Its east facade is 184 meters long, making it the longest facade of a country house in Europe. Wentworth Woodhouse is also the largest private home in the UK, at 23,000 square feet. The house contains more than 300 rooms, with some estimating 365, one for each day of the year, though experts disagree on the exact number. The house has a floor area of ​​1 hectare and is surrounded by a park on the 6,100 hectare estate that now belongs to another owner.

Wentworth Woodhouse was originally a Jacobean house, but it was completely rebuilt at the behest of Thomas Watson-Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Rockingham , (1693-1750). The existing house was later demoted to just one wing of the new house with grand new additions which his son, Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham , who was twice Prime Minister , demoted. The 2nd Marquess established Wentworth Woodhouse as an important stronghold of the Whigs . In the 18th century, the Earls FitzWilliam inherited the house and kept it in the family until 1979, when it fell to the heirs of the 8th and 10th Earls. They particularly appreciated its value as huge amounts of coal were discovered under the property.

architecture

Wentworth Woodhouse (east facade) from A Complete History of the County of York by Thomas Allen (1828–1830)
West facade

Wentworth Woodhouse consists of two interconnected houses that form east and west facades. The original house, today on the west facade, with the gardens that extend northwest towards the village, was built from bricks and provided with natural stone applications. The unmatched length of the east facade is believed to have been the result of a rivalry with the Stainborough branch of the Wentworth family who inherited the lesser title of Baron Raby from Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford , but not his lands, which fell to the Watsons, including a notable series of Strafford portraits by Anthonis van Dyck and Daniel Mytens . The Watsons then adopted the addition of "Wentworth" to their family name. The Stainborough-Wentworths, for whom the Earldom of Strafford was resurrected, lived in nearby Wentworth Castle , which they bought in the spirit of competition in 1708 and had busily and magnificently remodeled.

history

The west wing of Wentworth Woodhouse, built of brick in the English Baroque , was commissioned by Thomas Watson-Wentworth, after 1728 Lord Malton , started in 1725 after he had inherited the property from his father in 1723. It replaced the Jacobean house that was once the home of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford , who King Charles I sacrificed in 1641 to pacify Parliament. The builder whom Wentworth's grandson turned to plan the large house he intended was local builder and country architect Ralph Tunnicliffe , who had previous experience in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. Tunnicliffe was so pleased with this high point in his provincial practice that he issued an engraving marked “R. Tunniclif, architectus ”and must date before 1734 as it is dedicated to“ Baron Malton ”, Watson-Wentworth's earlier title. But the Whigs did not like the baroque style and so did not admire the new house. Around 1734, before the west facade was completed, Wentworth's grandson, Thomas Watson-Wentworth , commissioned Henry Flitcroft to build the east facade "addition," which was actually a new, much larger country house facing in the opposite direction, to the southeast. showed. Their model for this house was Colen Campbell's Wanstead House , illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus of 1715.

In the same year, the renovation was already in full swing. In a letter from the amateur architect Sir Thomas Robinson from Rokeby to his father-in-law, Lord Carlisle , dated June 6, 1734, Sir Thomas reported that he found the garden facade “finished” and that the main facade could be started: “When it is finished, it will it will be an amazing work, infinitely better than anything we have in England today, "and he added," All the work is left to Lord Burlington entirely , and I know that no citizen's house in Europe will have seven such great rooms, which are as finely proportioned as these. ”In the 20th century, Nikolaus Pevsner would agree with this opinion, but the mention of the architect Earl Burlington, arbiter of architectural taste, was a bad prophecy for the provincial builder and site supervisor Tunnicliffe. There is no doubt that Burlington's intervention at the time, when the west facade was not yet finished, persuaded the then Earl of Malton to commission '' Henry Flitcroft '' to revise Tunnicliffe's plans and build the east wing. Flitcroft was Burlington's professional architectural consultant - "Burlington Harry," as he was called. He had prepared Inigo Jones' drawings for the engravers , which were published by Burlington and William Kent in 1727. And in fact Kent was called in to chat about Wentworth Woodhouse, which was moderated by Sir Thomas Robinson , although Flitcroft also took part in the event and made drawings for the house over and over again in the following decade: he remodeled and enlarged Tunnicliffe's provincial Baroque west facade they attached, wings, as well as temples and other buildings in the park. Contemporary engravings of the grand, public-facing east facade give Flitcroft as the architect. Flitcroft, who was the right hand man of the architectural "amateurs" and was equally busy with his work for the Royal Board of Works , couldn't be on site all the time, but: Francis Bickerton , construction supervisor and builder from York , paid in 1738 and 1743 Bills.

The great east facade is shown more often. The west facade, the "garden front", which Sir Thomas Robinson found completed in 1734, is the private facade that looked at the "giardino secreto" between the house facade and the enclosed kitchen garden, which was more for family leisure than for social and political ambitions that were expressed in the east facade was intended. Most of the remains were recreated in the 19th century.

Whistlejacket , by George Stubbs ( National Gallery (London) )
Diana by Joseph Nollekens in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham , briefly Prime Minister in 1765/1766 and again in 1782, inherited Wentworth Woodhouse. The architect he hired was John Carr of York, who added another story to portions of the east wing and portici to the matching wings, each equivalent to a medium-sized country house. James "Athenian" Stuart provided drawings for panels in the Pillared Hall . The Whistlejacket Room was named after George Stubbs ' portrait of the most famous racehorse of all time of the same name. The extensions were completed in 1772. The second marquess envisaged a sculpture gallery in the house, which was never realized. Four marble figures were executed by Joseph Nollekens in this frame in anticipation of the gallery: Diana , drawn and dated 1778, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum , Juno , Venus and Minerva are in the J. Paul Getty along with an ancient Roman statue from Paris Museum .

Wentworth Woodhouse and all of its interior furnishings later fell to the family of the Marquess' sister, the Earls FitzWilliam .

The park

In 1790, after Lord FitzWilliam had completed all the renovations with the help of John Carr, he turned to the most famous landscaper, Humphry Repton , for whom this was the most ambitious project of the season, one which he, because the memory of it was still fresh, he in detail Described in Some Observations of the Theory an Practice of Landscape Gardening from 1803. A central terrace in front of the main building created the transition from the house to the undulating pastureland. Four obelisks stood on the bowling green and looked small compared to the house. Repton implemented them. Although there were a number of eye-catchers and other details in the parkland, Repton said that there were too few trees and the house was only surrounded by "coarse grass and rubble," which Repton also had removed before the large earth movements began, that of Men with shovels and donkey carts and turned the lumpy ground into soft hills. Two large ponds, which can be seen from the east facade and from the driveway, were dug in the shape of a snake. Some of Flitcroft's outbuildings were demolished, but not Carr's pretty stable yard from 1768, which is entered through a Tuscan arch with an ornamental gable. Many trees have been planted.

Follies

The property and its surroundings contain a number of follies , many with associations with Whig politics in the 18th century:

  • Hoober Stand : A pointed pyramid with a hexagonal lantern named after the ancient forest in which it was built. It is 30 meters high and was built from 1747-1748 according to Flitcroft's plans to commemorate the defeat of the Jacobites , in whose rebellion Lord Malton and his surviving son took part. Her defense efforts for the Hanoverian Whig establishment were rewarded with the appointment of Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire and the title of Marquess of Rockingham. Thus, the monument indirectly indicates the greater fame of the family. The tower, from which you can look out over the surrounding landscape like a watchtower, is open to the public all summer on Sunday afternoons.
  • Keppel's Column : 'A 35-meter-high Tuscan column commemorating the acquittal of Admiral Keppel , a good friend of Lord Rockingham , who was tried before the court-martial . Your entasis bulges visibly, which indicates the reduction of the originally planned height, which was necessary due to financial problems. It was designed by John Carr .
  • The Rockingham Mausoleum : A three-story, 27-meter-high building in a light forest, of which only the top floor can be seen above the treetops. It was commissioned by Earl FitzWilliam in 1783 as a memorial to the future First Marquess of Rockingham . It was designed by John Carr , whose first plan for an obelisk was not accepted and instead an adaptation of the Roman cenotaph of the Julier in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence near Arles was decided. The ground floor consists of an enclosed hall with a statue of the former Prime Minister by Joseph Nollekens and busts of his eight best friends. The first floor forms an open colonnade with Corinthian columns that surround an (empty) sarcophagus . The 2nd floor is a Roman lantern. Like Hober Stand , the mausoleum is also open to the public on summer Sunday afternoons.
  • Needle's Eye : A 14-meter-high pyramid made of sandstone blocks with an ornamental urn at the top and a high Gothic keel arch passage through the middle, which spans a street that is no longer needed. It was built in the 18th century, ostensibly to win a bet, after the second marquess claimed he could steer a horse-drawn cart through a needle's eye.
  • Bear Pit : Accessible through the nearby garden center. Built on two floors with a spiral staircase. The outer passage (around 1630) is part of the architecture of the original country house. At the end of the garden is a grotto guarded by two life-size statues of Roman soldiers.

  • "Doric Loggia" on the property

  • Needle's Eye

  • Rockingham Mausoleum

  • Passage to the Bear Pit

Royal visit 1912

King George V and Queen Mary visited South Yorkshire July 8-12, 1912 and stayed at Wentworth Woodhouse for four days. Their entourage consisted of a large number of guests, such as B. Archbishop of York Cosmo Gordon Lang , Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood , and Lady Harewood, Lady Londonderry, Lawrence Dundas, 1st Marquess of Zetland , and Lady Zetland, Aldred Lumley, 10th Earl of Scarbrough , and Lady Scarbrough, William Parsons, 5th Earl of Rosse , and Lady Rosse, Charles Beresford , and Lady Beresford, Walter Long, 1st Viscount Long , and Lady Doreen Long and Lord Helmsley and Lady Helmsley.

The visit ended on the evening of July 11th with a torch blow from miners and a music program from members of the Sheffield Musical Union and the Wentworth Choral Society . A crowd of 25,000 gathered on the lawn to see the King and Queen on the balcony of the portico. The king spoke to the assembled crowd.

Destruction of the property

In April 1946, on the instructions of Emanuel Shinwell , then Secretary of Energy in the Labor government, a "line of trucks and heavy construction equipment" arrived at Wentworth Woodhouse. The intention was to mine coal on a large part of the property near the country house. This was an area where the rich Barnsley Seam (a coal seam ) was no more than 30 meters below the surface, and so the area between the country house and Rockingham Mausoleum became the largest open pit coal mine in Britain at the time: 132,000 tons of coal became only mined from the area under the gardens. Allegedly, coal was urgently needed as fuel for the railways in Britain's tight post-war economy, but this explanation of the energy minister was valid then and is still considered by many as a useful cloak for an act of class struggle against the coal-owning aristocracy. Research by the University of Sheffield , commissioned by Peter Wentworth-FitzWilliam, 8th Earl FitzWilliam , revealed that the quality of the coal was "very poor" and "not worth mining." This was the exact opposite of what Shinwell had promised: he said the coal was "exceptionally good quality."

The coal mine reached on this side of the house to the edge of the main lawn.

Shinwell, with the destruction of the FitzWilliams and "the privileged rich" in mind, decreed that coal mining should continue to the back door of Wentworth Woodhouse, the east front of the mansion. What followed was the excavation of 400,000 m² of lawns and woodland, the well-known formal gardens and the exemplary driveway that was graveled with pink shale (a by-product of the family's coal mines). Ancient trees were uprooted and the spoil made of earth and rubble towered 15 meters high in front of the family's living quarters.

The locals supported the earl in his argument. Joe Hall , president of the National Union of Mineworkers' Yorkshire group , said that “the miners in this area would do almost anything to prevent Wentworth Woodhouse from being destroyed. For many mining communities this is sacred reason. ”In an industry known for being rough around workers, the FitzWilliams were respected employers who were known for treating their employees well. The union's Yorkshire group later threatened to strike against the government's plans for Wentworth Woodhouse, and Joe Hall wrote personally to Clement Attlee , making an ineffective attempt to stop coal mining. This spontaneous local activism, based on the honest popularity of the FitzWilliam family with the local people, was misinterpreted in Whitehall as an "intrigue" of the Earl.

The coal mine worked its way into the fields to the west of the country house and continued until the early 1950s. The excavated areas took many years to return to their natural state; large parts of the open forest and formal gardens were not restored. The current owners of the property claim that mining near the house caused significant structural damage to the building through settlement and in 2012 filed a £ 100m claim against the Coal Authority for restoration work .

Twice inheritance taxes in the 1940s and the nationalization of their coal mines significantly reduced the wealth of the FitzWilliams. Much of the furnishings in the country house were auctioned off in 1948, 1986 and 1998. At Christie's 1948 auction, the painting Rinaldo, overcome by love for Armida, by Anthony van Dyck was sold for 4600 guineas (now £ 156,189).

Many pieces remained in the family, including many works loaned to museums by Trustees of the FitzWilliam Estates .

Lease to Lady Mabel College

East front of Wentworth Woodhouse 2004.

The Ministry of Health tried to requisition the house as "a home for homeless industrial families". To prevent this from happening, the Earl tried to give the house to the National Trust , but the Trust refused. Finally, Lady Mabel FitzWilliam , sister of the 7th Earl and local Alderman , threaded a contract in which the West Riding County Council leased most of the house from the estate management to run a school, while a small part (40 rooms !) was still available to the family as an apartment. From 1949 to 1979, the house housed the Lady Mabel College of Physical Education , where sports teachers were trained. The college was later merged with Sheffield City Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University ), which then terminated the lease in 1988 because of prohibitive maintenance costs for the buildings.

Sold by the FitzWilliam family

In 1989 the country house was in a bad state of preservation. After the Polytechnic no longer wanted to lease the building and the family no longer needed it, the family's trustees decided to sell it, including the 280,000 m² surrounding estate, but kept the 61 km² land. The house was bought by local-born businessman Wensley Grosvenor Baydon-Baillie , who immediately began a restoration program, but his business breakdown saw the house fall into the hands of a Swiss bank and be sold again in 1998. Clifford Newbold (July 1926-April 2015), a Highgate architect , bought it for a little over £ 1.5m. Newbold went on with the defined restoration and renovation program as featured in Country Life magazines on May 17 and 24 Described February 2010. The surrounding parkland is owned by the Trustees of the FitzWilliam Estates .

Again for sale

In 2014, Newbold's house went up for sale informally with no desired selling price, but The Times thought it would be around £ 7 million, it was stated that the house would need repairs worth around £ 40 million . Following the death of Mr Newbold, the house was formally put up for sale through Savills in May 2015 at a price of £ 8 million.

In November 2015, the planned sale to the Hong Kong investment firm Lake House Group failed. In 2016 the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust bought the house for £ 7m. The Trust estimates the renovation costs for the building and land at £ 42m, of which the UK Government plans to take on £ 7.6m.

In film and television

The country house and estate served as the backdrop for a number of film and television productions:

Individual references and comments

  1. ^ A b c d M. J. Charlesworth: The Wentworths: Family and Political Rivalry in the English Landscape Garden in Garden History . Issue 14.2 (autumn 1986). Pp. 120-137.
  2. ^ The Sunday Times Magazine . February 11, 2007. p. 19.
  3. ^ Wentworth Woodhouse: A Vision of Greatness . Yorkshire Post (October 6, 2013). Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  4. ↑ Guinness Book of Records . 1966, p. 175
  5. ^ The extensive archives of the FitzWilliam family of Wentworth Woodhouse were moved to the Sheffield Public Library in 1948 .
  6. ↑ Baron Malton was made Earl of Malton in 1734 and Marquess of Rockingham in 1746.
  7. ↑ The first block built already contained an almost 40 meter long gallery on the ground floor. (Charlesworth (1986): p. 126).
  8. ↑ Ralph Tunnicliffe (approx. 1688–1736) appears in the accounts of various Churchwardens, as he rebuilt and rebuilt churches; shortly before his commissioning with Wentworth Woodhouse, he had rebuilt Wortley Hall for Edward Wortley Montagu . ( Tunnicliffe, Ralph in Howard Colvin : A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840 . 3rd Edition. Yale University Press, Yale 1995.); Wortley Montagu was a well-known Whig politician who moved in the same circles as Lord Malton: an obelisk in honor of his wife, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, stands in the parkland of Wentworth Castle of the rival branch of the family.
  9. ^ A b Colvin: Tunnicliffe, Ralph . 1995.
  10. ↑ Michael I. Wilson: William Kent, Architect, Designer, Painter, Gardener, 1685-1748 . 1984. p. 166 f.
  11. ↑ "The interior of Wentworth Woodhouse is of extraordinary value (...) The sequence of rooms along the east facade from the Whistlejacket Room in the southeast to the library in the northeast cannot easily be found anywhere else in England." (Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England . 1967. Chapter: Yorkshire: The West Riding . P. 546.)
  12. ↑ Sir Thomas Robinson, in another letter to Carlisle, enclosing Kent's engraved drawing for the Whitehall Treasury: “It gives me some satisfaction as a Yorkshire man (and Lord Malton trusted me to negotiate an agreement between him and Mr. Kent zu), to reflect that the architect of this wonderful building (the treasury) should from now on execute and complete this wonderful building (...) for his lordship ”(quoted in: Wilson (1984): p. 166). However, historians have discovered no interference from Kent in Flitcroft's project on Wentworth Woodhouse.
  13. ↑ "As this political theater unfolded over the next half century, the protagonists in stone remembered it," remarked Charlesworth. (Charlesworth (1986): p. 129)
  14. ↑ His portraits of Wilhelm III. and George II, who were commissioned by Rockingham, could not be found. (Martin Hopkinson: '' A Portrait by James' Athenian 'Stuart' '' in The Burlington Magazine . Issue 132. No. 1052 (November 1990). P. 794.)
  15. ↑ Dated around 1768–1770 by Ellis K. Waterhouse: Lord Fitzwilliam's Sporting Pictures by Stubbs in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs . Issue 88. No. 521 (August 1946). Pp. 197, 199.
  16. ^ Paul Williamson: Acquisitions of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1986-1991: Supplement in The Burlington Magazine . Issue 133. No. 1065 (December 1991). P. 879, Fig. XI.)
  17. ↑ The job title landscape architect was an invention from the end of the 19th century.
  18. ↑ Horace Walpole thought they looked like Tenpins.
  19. ↑ a b Repton 1803, quoted in Edward Hyams: Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton . 1971. p. 148 f.
  20. ^ Society and Court News. . July 9, 1912.
  21. ↑ "My Friends." The King's Speech to His Subjects. Wentworth Spectacle . July 12, 1912.
  22. ↑ a b c The Sunday Times Magazine . February 11, 2007. p. 23
  23. ↑ Catherine Bailey: Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty . Penguin, London 2007. ISBN 0-670-91542-4 . P. 393.
  24. ↑ Stately home owners claim £ 100 million as house sinks into ground . The Telegraph. February 26, 2012. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  25. ↑ £ 100m Claim for Owners of Wentworth Woodhouse Stately Home . Salmon Assessors Ltd. March 23, 2012. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  26. ↑ Vandyck fetches 4,600 Guineas Services . June 11, 1948.
  27. ↑ Catherine Bailey: Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty . Penguin, London 2007. ISBN 0-670-91542-4 . Pp. 397-402.
  28. ↑ Catherine Bailey: Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty . Penguin, London 2007. ISBN 0-670-91542-4 . P. 449.
  29. ↑ Catherine Bailey: Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty . Penguin, London 2007. ISBN 0-670-91542-4 . P. 451.
  30. ^ Rotherham Advertiser (May 6, 2015).
  31. ↑ Michael Ford: What fate awaits Wentworth Woodhouse? English Country Houses News. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  32. ↑ Picture Library . Country Life. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  33. ^ The Times (November 1, 2014).
  34. ↑ Where would Mr Darcy live now? Jane Austen's 'Pemberley' is on sale . The Telegraph. May 17, 2015. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  35. ↑ http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-34901150
  36. ↑ http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-35490403
  37. ↑ http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-39407421
  38. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/news/how-the-government-may-step-in-to-save-britains-greatest-histori/

Web links

Commons : Wentworth Woodhouse  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Coordinates: 53 ° 28 ′ 27 "  N , 1 ° 24 ′ 17"  W.