Wentworth Woodhouse to be saved by HM Government with £7.6m Heritage Grant
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/...atest-histori/
Wentworth Woodhouse to be saved by HM Government with £7.6m Heritage Grant
The aristocratic 'palace' is the largest private resident in Britain and largest facade in Europe
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Originally Posted by Telegraph
The Government confirmed in the Autumn Statement that it would step in to save Wentworth Woodhouse with a £7.6million grant. In October, The Telegraph reported on the battle to save it.
Wentworth Woodhouse, the largest private house in the country, near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, is often billed as the “greatest historic house that nobody has ever heard of”. With a 606ft façade and 365 rooms including a 60ft square marble hall, it’s no shrinking violet.
Since 1948, the house has been in decline, mothballed and left to be a shadow of its former self.
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Originally Posted by Telegraph
Owned until 1989 by the Fitzwilliam family, the house is the product of a series of feuds. The Wentworth family had owned the estate since the 13th century, but it wasn’t until 1725 that Thomas Watson-Wentworth began building the house that stands today. His initial Baroque replacement of the existing Jacobean building was not admired by the Whig coterie he was trying to impress, so in 1734 he commissioned a Palladian “extension”, taking the form of a much larger house facing the opposite direction. In 1782 the property was passed to William, the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam, whose family made it the beloved centre of the community.
But the 20th century took its toll on both house and family. After the seventh Earl died in 1942, his son Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam inherited the house during a national coal shortage. Wentworth was targeted by the Labour minister for fuel and power, Manny Shinwell, who declared war on the Fitzwilliams, in an act of perceived class-spite. He ordered mining right up to the windows of the house, despite the coal stock having been described as “not worth the getting”.
Even the miners working on the land opposed the government’s plans: Joe Hall, the president of the Yorkshire branch of the National Union of Mineworkers, wrote to prime minister Clement Attlee, declaring it “against all common sense”. The land in front of the house looked, one historian said, like a “scene from Hell”.
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Originally Posted by Telegraph
Kenny hopes that reinvigorating the original northern powerhouse will mend some of these wounds. “It was Labour against the aristocracy and it drove the aristocracy out. There is a moral obligation on the Government to put this right,” she says.
Two years after the mining began, Peter Fitzwilliam was killed in a plane crash over France. Shortly after, the house was leased, then put up for sale and passed through a few hands until its final owner, Clifford Newbold, died in 2015, and the house was put on the market again. It attracted significant interest but no certain deals.
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Originally Posted by Telegraph
Now, Wentworth’s fortunes may be about to change dramatically. Kenny is working with Marcus Binney, president of campaign group Save Britain’s Heritage, and she is also chair of trustees of the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, a body hoping to rescue this piece of architectural, industrial and political history for the nation.
The trust – whose board includes the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland Bt, a descendant of the Fitzwilliam family, and Lady Juliet Tadgell, daughter of the eighth Earl Fitzwilliam – is one of several bidders hoping to acquire the building for £7million. Proceedings have been delayed by ongoing litigation with the coal authority but engagement with interested parties has recently been able to recommence.
For Binney, time is of the essence. “Three of the trusts involved are winding down. They will run out of time if we don’t do it soon. It really is now or never.” He proposes a quadruple use for the house: a National Trust-run public opening of the main interiors and gardens; a catering and events space in the north wing; offices for small businesses in the stables; and 15 residential units for holiday lets and short-term leases.
Between the start of the century, around 1911 when the Liberals backed by Labour introduced staggered taxes and inheritance tax especially on aristocracy in spiteful class warfare, to now it is estimated Britain lost over a third of its stately homes. Anyone ever been to Alton Towers? That beautiful building, former stately home of the Earls of Staffordshire, stands as a shell of its former self when it was stripped out and left to crumble in the awful 1960s. In many ways it is lucky: at least the shell still remains whereas many have been lost forever.
The good news these days is that of those stately homes left and aristocratic palaces still occupied by the families, many are now managing to make them cost effective by opening much of the palace up to the public and hosting parties, wedding functions and all sorts in the houses and on the grounds. As Wentworth shows though, its clear we're not going to allow ever again what happened to so many others happen again.
Prince Charles recently saved Dumfies House, formerly owned by the Marquess' of Bute, in Ayreshire.
Thoughts?
