When it appeared for sale on the open market in 2015 for £8 million, Wentworth Woodhouse must have been the largest house for sale anywhere in the world. It is reputed to have five miles of galleries and passages and as many rooms as there are days in a year! These are perhaps exaggerations, but in the sales brochure, the agent Savills marketed the house as ‘one of the great Georgian houses of England.’ Imagine if Chatsworth came up for sale with a leaky roof and a handful of acres. It is not likely a similar house will be offered for sale in England ever again.
Its extraordinary size (over 124,500 square feet plus cellars, according to Savills) is in part due to the politically charged taste for architecture in the eighteenth century, and a family feud. Thomas Watson-Wentworth, first Marquess of Rockingham and a Whig politician, remodelled a Jacobean house on the site in English Baroque style from 1724-28. Lord Rockingham’s liberal politics were better expressed, however, by the Palladian style, leading to the building of a 600-foot-long East front from 1731-50.
In his 2011 documentary The Country House Revealed, Dan Cruickshank tells how a family feud became expressed in architectural projects. In 1708, Wentworth Castle in nearby Stainborough was remodelled by the family’s rival, Lord Raby. The completion of Wentworth Woodhouse to designs by Ralph Tunnicliffe and Henry Flitcroft was a resounding victory for the Rockinghams by comparison.
Large country houses had a practical, political function in the eighteenth century. When the number of men in a county who could vote was small enough to fit under one very large roof, entertaining on a grand scale had a useful effect on election outcomes. The country house historian Mark Girouard details this phenomenon in the chapter Power Houses in his landmark book Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History.
The political success of the family culminated in the appointment of Charles Watson-Wentworth, Second Marquess, as Prime Minister in 1765, then again in 1782. Under his tenure, the house was improved by architect John Carr of York, and adorned with paintings of Rockingham’s racehorses by George Stubbs, including the famous Whistlejacket – now in the National Gallery, London.
The house later passed to the Fitzwilliam family, becoming the heart of their coal mining operation. The dramatic story of the decline of the family, the destruction of the landscape at Wentworth and the dispersal of their collections is told in the book Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty by Catherine Bailey.
Today, the Rockingham and Fitzwilliam titles are extinct, the village of Wentworth and the follies in the park belong to a preservation trust, while the wider estate belongs to the Naylor-Leyland family of Milton Hall, Cambridgeshire. Fortunately, the house was bought in 2017 by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, which has recently begun urgent repairs with the support of government funding. The house is regularly open to the public, is a venue for events and has become a popular filming location, featuring recently in Downton Abbey, Darkest Hour, Gentleman Jack, Mr Turner and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel.
Once the house is fully restored, it would be wonderful to see Whistlejacket in situ again! The contents having been dispersed, it will be a challenge to decide how to present the house. Loans of furniture and art could be made from other houses and museums, but the plasterwork, chimneypieces and remaining fixtures provide plenty of interest. Perhaps sturdy reproduction furniture can provide a hands-on 'living history' aspect to the visitor experience? The house is large enough to accommodate displays of several periods of its history; the East state apartments would look well showing the arts and material culture of the 1760s-80s, when the Rockinghams were at the height of their power. The West part of the house contains rooms added later, such as the long gallery and 'Clifford's Lodgings' - these could tell the Regency to Edwardian stories of the Fitzwilliams.
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| The Baroque West front of the house |
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The seventeenth century house seen in stone, surrounded by later additions in red brick
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The old gateway to the seventeenth century house was once attributed to Inigo Jones
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An ornate chimneypiece in the Baroque part of the house
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The staircase between the Pillared Hall and the Marble Saloon, designed by John Carr of York
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The ceiling of the Van Dyck Room - one of the state rooms on the East side of the house
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The vast stable block, also designed by Carr of York, housed Whistlejacket and other racehorses
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| A Greek Revival gatehouse in Wentworth Park |
Have you been to Wentworth Woodhouse yet? Please add any corrections or additions in the comments!
All photos taken by the author in 2017
Wentworth Woodhouse website
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