Net gains in stately home revamp
Broadband among new features as restoration project brings listed country house into the 21st century
IT COULD boast 365 rooms, five miles of corridors and a façade twice as long as Buckingham Palace but, as of just over a year ago, only one vacuum cleaner.
However, the restoration of the Georgian country pile in South Yorkshire that was once the largest privately-owned house in England, has proceeded at a pace that has astonished even those overseeing it.
As they presented the accounts yesterday for a year that had seen it host eight weddings catering for some 1,700 guests, the conservationists could report that Wentworth Woodhouse had been finally upgraded to the 21st century.
The Grade I-listed building and its 83-acre estate, put up by the first Marquess of Rockingham between 1725 and 1750, had been decaying for years when in 2017 it was sold for £7m to a preservation trust.
Julie Kenny, its chair of trustees, said it was with “pride and astonishment” they it looked back on what had been achieved “in only our second year as custodians”.
She added: “It is a very exciting time and this progress has been made thanks to our small, dedicated team.”
In the middle of wide open countryside between Barnsley and Rotherham, Wentworth Woodhouse is said by some to have been Jane Austen’s inspiration for Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. Its deterioration was partly the result of subsidence from an opencast mine dug in the estate on the orders of the post-war Labour government. It continued to decline under successive private owners, despite rescue attempts, and a report to Rotherham Council by English Heritage two years ago suggested that much of the roof was in critical decay.
In 2016, the then Chancellor, Philip Hammond, set aside £7.6m for the estate. With new grants of £1.8m last year, more than £45,000 from public donations and the building’s unique and magnificent interior finally protected by a temporary plastic roof, the Trust said its work was at last bearing fruit. “We’ve had to grow very quickly – we can’t afford to stand still,” its chief executive, Sarah McLeod, told The Yorkshire Post.
“We’re really a start-up business with the overhead of a huge country house.”
The renovation had been beset with challenges, she added. Adding broadband to its outdated infrastructure had been a particular headache.
“It was extremely costly. It had to be beamed across to us from somewhere,” she said.
She also admitted that the scale of the challenge was daunting. “The expectations on the team are great and at times we feel somewhat overwhelmed with the enormity,” she said.
“But we all see this as our own personal challenge.”
The coming year will see slates returned to the long gallery roof and repairs to the detailed stone cornice on the south and north faces. The roof over the most significant parts of the house, is due to be complete in May.
We all see this as our own personal challenge.
Julie Kenny, chair of the trustees of Wentworth House.