Wentworth Castle
Wentworth Castle is a
An older house existed on the estate, then called Stainborough, when it was purchased by
The estate was in the care of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust from 2001 to June 2019 and was open to the public year-round seven days a week. Despite massive restoration, the castle gardens were closed to the public in 2017 amidst a funding crisis.
History
The original house, known as the Cutler house, was constructed for Sir Gervase Cutler (born 1640) in 1670. Sir Gervase then sold the estate to Thomas Wentworth, later the 1st Earl of Strafford (of the 2nd creation). The house was remodelled in two great campaigns, by two earls, in remarkably different styles, each time under unusual circumstances.
First building campaign
The first building campaign to upgrade the original structure was initiated c. 1711 by Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby (1672–1739). He was the grandson of Sir William Wentworth, father of Thomas Wentworth, the attainted 1st Earl. Raby was himself created 1st Earl of Strafford (second creation) in 1711.
The estate of Wentworth Woodhouse, which he believed was his birthright, was scarcely six miles distant and was a constant bitter sting, for the Strafford fortune had passed from William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, the childless son of the great earl, to his wife's nephew, Thomas Watson; only the barony of Raby had gone to a blood-relation. M.J. Charlesworth surmises that it was a feeling that what by right 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".[4]
Wentworth had been a soldier in the service of
He had broken his tour of duty at Berlin to conclude the purchase of Stainborough in the summer of 1708, and returned to Berlin, armed with sufficient specifications of the site to engage the services of a military architect who had spent some years recently in England, Johann von Bodt. who provided the designs.[5] Wentworth was in Italy in 1709, buying paintings for the future house: "I have great credit by my pictures," he reported with satisfaction: "They are all designed for Yorkshire, and I hope to have a better collection there than Mr. Watson."[6] To display them a grand gallery would be required, for which James Gibbs must have provided the designs, since a contract for wainscoting "as desined by Mr Gibbs" survives among Wentworth papers in the British Library (Add MS 22329, folio 128). The Gallery was completed in 1724.[7] There are designs, probably by Bodt, for an elevation and a section showing the gallery at Wentworth Castle in the Victoria and Albert Museum (E.307–1937), in an album of mixed drawings which belonged to William Talman's son John.[8] the gallery extends 180 feet, 24 feet wide, and 30 high, screened into three divisions by veined marble Corinthian columns with gilded capitals, and with corresponding pilasters against projecting piers: in the intervening spaces four marble copies of Roman sculptures on block plinths survived until the twentieth century.[9] Construction was sufficiently advanced by March–April 1714 that surviving correspondence between Strafford and William Thornton concerned the disposition of panes in the window sashes: the options were for windows four panes wide, as done in the best houses Thornton assured the earl, for which crown glass would do, or for larger panes, three panes across, which might require plate glass: Strafford opted for the latter.[10] The results, directed largely by letter from a distance,[11] are unique in Britain. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner found the east range "of a palatial splendour uncommon in England."[12] The grand suite of parade rooms on the ground floor extended from the room at the north end with a ceiling allegory of Plenty to the south end, with one of a Fame.
Bodt's use of a giant order of pilasters on the front and other features, suggested to John Harris that Bodt, who had been in England in the 1690s, had had access to drawings by
First earl's landscape
A staunch Tory,[20] Lord Strafford remained in political obscurity during Walpole's Whig supremacy, for the remainder of his life. An obelisk was erected to the memory of Queen Anne in 1734, and a sitting room in the house was named "Queen Anne's Sitting Room" until modern times. Other landscape features were added, one after the other, with the result that today there are twenty-six listed structures in what remains of the parkland.
Second earl at Wentworth Castle
The first earl died in 1739 and his son succeeded him.
Horace Walpole singled out Wentworth Castle as a paragon for the perfect integration of the site, the landscape, 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 colour of the stone the most harmonious; the virtuoso should be directed to the new front of Wentworth-castle:[25] the result of the same judgement 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."[26]
Later history
With the extinction of the earldom following the death of third earl in 1799, the huge family estates were divided into three, one-third going to the descendants of each daughter of
In May 1853, a freak snowstorm also caused severe damage, particularly to the mature trees within the gardens, some of them rare species from America planted by the first and second earls. Frederick Vernon Wentworth was succeeded by his son Thomas in 1885 who added the iron framed Conservatory and electric lighting by 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 during the winters of 1887 and 1889. The estate was inherited by Thomas' eldest son, Captain Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, MP for Brighton, in 1902. Preferring his Suffolk estates, the Captain put the most valuable of his Wentworth Castle house contents up for sale at auction with Christie's after the First World War. The paintings sold at Christie's on 13 November 1919.[27]
Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, who had no direct heirs, sold the house and its gardens to Barnsley Corporation in 1948, while the rest of his estates, in Yorkshire, Suffolk and Scotland were left to a distant cousin.[28] The remaining contents of Wentworth Castle were emptied at a house sale,[29] and the house became a teacher training college, the Wentworth Castle College of Education, until 1978. It was then used by Northern College.[30] It was featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum's exhibition "The Country House in Danger". The great landscape that Walpole praised in 1780 was described in 1986 as now "disturbed and ruinous" with several listed structures put on English Heritage's at-risk registry. The second earl's sinuous river excavated in the 1730s was reduced to a series of silty ponds.[31][32]
Wentworth Castle Gardens, the only Grade I-listed parkland in South Yorkshire, underwent £20m worth of investment from 2002 to 2017.[33] The Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust was formed in 2002 as a charity with the aim "to undertake a phased programme of restoration and development works which will provide benefit to the general public by providing extensive access to the parkland and gardens and the built heritage, conserving these important heritage assets for future generations." The restoration of the Rotunda was completed in 2010 and the parkland has been returned to deer park.
The estate opened fully to visitors in 2007, following the completion of the first phase of restoration, which cost £15.2 million,[34] Further restoration was completed in 2014.
Wentworth Castle was featured on the BBC TV show
Despite attracting tens of thousands of visitors a year, Wentworth Castle Gardens was forced to close in the spring of 2017.[1] During the closure years a small team of gardeners and a group of community volunteers carried out essential maintenance of the gardens and curated an archive of material about the site's history.
In September 2018 it was announced that the
On Saturday 8 June 2019 the gardens and parkland were reopened under the care and management of the National Trust.[37] The site is open year-round except for Christmas Day. The Partnership between the National Trust, Northern College and Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council delivers a programme of cultural and environmental events at Wentworth Castle and other sites managed by Barnsley Museums.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b "Castle gardens close in funding crisis". BBC News. 17 April 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ a b "Opening date announced". National Trust. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
- ^ "Wentworth Castle Gardens to reopen next weekend - Barnsley News from the Barnsley Chronicle". Barnsley Chronicle. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
- Journal to Stella, noted by M. J. Charlesworth, "The Wentworths: Family and Political Rivalry in the English Landscape Garden" Garden History 14.2 (Autumn 1986:120–137) p. 120.
- ^ Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 3rd ed. 1995 (Yale University Press) 1995. s.v. "Bodt or Bott, Johannes von, (1670–1745)".
- ^ Letter quoted by Charlesworth 1986:123.
- ^ Colvin 1995, s.v. "Gibbs, James"; see Terry Friedman, James Gibbs (1984:123–25, 321f, and pl. 124).
- ^ Lawrence Whistler, in Country Life 92 1952:1650, and John Harris, in Architectural Review July 1961, attributed the drawings, which had been annotated in a different ink W.T. del. et inv. to William Talman. Margaret Whinney classed them among attributed designs for which there is not adequate evidence, and, finding them too competent and too French for Talman, ascribed them to Bodt (Whinney, "William Talman" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 18.1–2 [January 1955:123–139] p. 136f, figs. 39ab). Her attribution has been followed, e.g. by Terry Friedman, "The English Appreciation of Italian Decorations" The Burlington Magazine 117 No. 873, Special Issue Devoted to French Neo-Classicism (December 1975:841–847) p. 846 note 27.
- ^ Horace Walpole, who couldn't praise the house and grounds highly enough (see below) dismissed the contents of the Gallery: "but four modern statues and some bad portraits" (quoted by Rosalys Coope, "The Gallery in England: Names and Meanings" Architectural History 27, Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies in Architectural History Presented to Howard Colvin (1984:446–455) p. 450.
- ^ Remarked on by Hentie Louw and Robert Crayford, "A Constructional History of the Sash-Window, c. 1670-c. 1725 (Part 2)", Architectural History 42 (1999:173–239) p. 188.
- ^ Robert Benson, Lord Bingley, the Tory politician and amateur architect, may have "looked after" the project in some way (Colvin 1995 s.v. "Benson, Robert, Lord Bingley").
- ^ Pevsner,
- ^ Colvin 1995, s.v. "Bodt or Bott, Johann von".
- ^ Noted by Kenneth Lemmon, "Wentworth Castle: A Forgotten Landscape" Garden History 3.3 (Summer 1975:50–57) p. 52.
- ^ Illustrated in Lemmon 1975 fig. p. 53.
- ^ Brown is not documented as working at Wentworth Castle.
- ^ Charlesworth 1986:123.
- Sir John Vanbrugh's long bastion wall at Castle Howard and by Strafford's cousin Lord Bathurst's "Alfred's Tower" at Cirencester Park, which might have provided the inspiration.
- ^ M. I. Webb, Michael Rysbrack 1954:161f (dated "c. 1730"); Rupert Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, rev. ed., s.v.. "Michael Rysbrack".
- ^ He was encumbered by James Stuart, the "Old Pretender", with the useless Jacobite title of "Duke of Strafford" in 1722.
- ^ In 1740, Argyll retired from the political arena in disgust.
- ^ Platt, a master builder and statuary (he provided the sculptures in the pediment, 1762), was a member of a dynasty of masons with a stoneyard at Rotherham, South Yorkshire (Colvin 1995, s.v. Platt").
- ^ Colvin 1995, s.v. "Ross, Charles".
- ^ Colvin 1995, s.v. Wentworth, William, 2nd Earl of Strafford" remarks that Walpole and William Bray (Sketch of a Tour into Derbyshire and Yorkshire 2nd ed. 1783:249 (noted in Colvin) confirm Strafford's responsibility.
- ^ Finished sixteen years previously, in 1764.
- ^ Walpole, The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780).
- ^ including the Young Knight by Vittore Carpaccio, which had lurked largely unnoticed in the collection, with an attribution to Dürer (Alec Martin, "The Young Knight by Carpaccio" The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 44 No. 251 (February 1924:56, 58–59).
- ^ "Vernon-Wentworth Muniments". Access to Archives. National Archives. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
- ^ Lancaster & Sons, June 1948.
- ^ "Quick overview of inheritance history of Wentworth Castle". Retrieved 17 January 2008.
- ^ "National Trust an option for Wentworth Castle Gardens". Barnsley Chronicle. 10 April 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ Charlesworth 1986:120, 129.
- ^ "Wentworth Castle Gardens - A restoration tragedy". The Yorkshire Post. 10 April 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
- ^ "Wentworth Castle Regeneration". Retrieved 17 January 2008.
- ^ "Conservatory". Wentworth Castle. Retrieved 17 January 2008.
- ^ "Victorian Conservatory Runner-Up In Prestigious Awards". We Are Barnsley. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
- ^ "Cash-strapped Wentworth Castle Gardens set to reopen". BBC News. BBC. 29 May 2019. Retrieved 8 June 2019.