A fundraising appeal to support the restoration of the South Tower at Wentworth Woodhouse has reached £240,000 in a matter of weeks.
Visit Rotherham reported last month on the Landmark Trust launching a campaign to restore a secluded eyrie and a rare survival of 18th century feminine taste within the monumental Rotherham mansion.
The charity works to save historic buildings in danger of being lost forever. Sensitive restoration offers "landmarks" a new future by making them available to everyone for self-catering holidays. The lettings income from the 200+ extraordinary buildings in the charity's care supports their maintenance and survival in our landscape, culture and society.
Following years of decay, the derelict Grade I mansion was bought in 2017 by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust (WWPT), who have embarked on the herculean task of restoring the place back to its former glory in a multi-phase project.
The Landmark Trust are now working with WWPT to save the South Tower, which sits at the most southerly tip of the building’s vast frontage. The tower’s fine upper chamber offers outstanding vistas of house and grounds and is reached via its own private footbridge.
WWPT carried out urgent external repairs to the South Tower in 2022. Yet inside this quiet hideaway, the once opulent plasterwork is crumbling, an exquisitely decorated ceiling has been lost and an elegant staircase is undermined by dry rot.
The Landmark Trust plans to repair the grandest room with traditional 18th-century skills using the finest craftspeople and their apprentices. As of now, the plaster ceiling has come down and black plastic sheeting fills its place, a marble panel by the brilliant English sculptor Joseph Nollekens had been removed for safety and dry rot is already engulfing the timber floor.
The Landmark Trust are now poised to act - to take on a long lease for £135,000 from the WWPT and develop a holiday let for two.
The parlour would become the drawing and dining room, and a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom would be created in the adjacent rooms. The approach would be, as it was from the first, via a handsome private footbridge from the elevated rear terrace.
Within the parlour, traditional 18th-century techniques would be used to re-create the Marchioness’s lost ceiling, guided by historic photographs, and drawing on the inventory to furnish her elegant chamber to evoke its character in its prime.
Without Landmark’s intervention, the South Tower will linger in dangerous deterioration at the furthest reach of the building, as this elegant room succumbs to damp and decay. This upper chamber is describes as a rare and exciting survival of undiluted female taste in the 18th century.
Dr Anna Keay OBE, Director of the Landmark Trust, said: "There really is nowhere that compares to Wentworth Woodhouse. This monumental Palladian palace in South Yorkshire is a miraculous survival. When I first saw this fascinating room a few years ago, I was struck by its combination of grandeur and intimacy, the glorious views south and west from its soaring sash windows, and by the perilous condition in which it stood. Two things were immediately clear: it needed urgent action to arrest its decay and – if we could just raise the necessary funds – it would make the most spell-binding place to stay."
Funding has already been made available to the project thanks to the H B Allen Charitable Trust and generous donations from early project Guardians means that over 70% of the necessary funds have already been secured.
The 1st Marquess completed Wentworth Woodhouse by 1748 as a seat of regional and national power. Charles Wentworth-Watson, 2nd Marquess, who was twice Prime Minister and instrumental in American independence, then set to work on its lavish interiors.
The South Tower, with its glorious parlour, was chosen by the 2nd Marchioness of Rockingham to be her personal retreat. The parlour itself is a single room in the upper part of the tower, which the Marchioness, Mary Watson-Wentworth, probably used mostly in summer. Under her direction in the mid-1770s the architect John Carr of York completed its interior, with its marble chimney piece, oval plaster reliefs of antique subjects and beautiful decorative ceiling. A contemporary inventory indicates that it was used both for business and entertaining. At her sycamore writing table the Marchioness wrote copious letters, including many to her husband, in whose political career and Whig ministry she played an important role.
After its aristocratic heyday in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when over 1,000 guests would attend legendary receptions and parties, Wentworth Woodhouse fell into disrepair. Open-cast coal mining in the 1940s and 50s came to within yards of the building’s rear façade and after a series of family tragedies it narrowly avoided demolition. A late reprieve, in its use as a training college for women PE teachers, ended in 1988 and by the early 21st century it was increasingly dilapidated and its future highly uncertain once again.
Landmark Trust website
Wentworth Woodhouse website
Images: WWPT / Landmark Trust / Olivia Brabbs
Visit Rotherham reported last month on the Landmark Trust launching a campaign to restore a secluded eyrie and a rare survival of 18th century feminine taste within the monumental Rotherham mansion.
The charity works to save historic buildings in danger of being lost forever. Sensitive restoration offers "landmarks" a new future by making them available to everyone for self-catering holidays. The lettings income from the 200+ extraordinary buildings in the charity's care supports their maintenance and survival in our landscape, culture and society.
Following years of decay, the derelict Grade I mansion was bought in 2017 by the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust (WWPT), who have embarked on the herculean task of restoring the place back to its former glory in a multi-phase project.
The Landmark Trust are now working with WWPT to save the South Tower, which sits at the most southerly tip of the building’s vast frontage. The tower’s fine upper chamber offers outstanding vistas of house and grounds and is reached via its own private footbridge.
WWPT carried out urgent external repairs to the South Tower in 2022. Yet inside this quiet hideaway, the once opulent plasterwork is crumbling, an exquisitely decorated ceiling has been lost and an elegant staircase is undermined by dry rot.
The Landmark Trust are now poised to act - to take on a long lease for £135,000 from the WWPT and develop a holiday let for two.
The parlour would become the drawing and dining room, and a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom would be created in the adjacent rooms. The approach would be, as it was from the first, via a handsome private footbridge from the elevated rear terrace.
Within the parlour, traditional 18th-century techniques would be used to re-create the Marchioness’s lost ceiling, guided by historic photographs, and drawing on the inventory to furnish her elegant chamber to evoke its character in its prime.
Dr Anna Keay OBE, Director of the Landmark Trust, said: "There really is nowhere that compares to Wentworth Woodhouse. This monumental Palladian palace in South Yorkshire is a miraculous survival. When I first saw this fascinating room a few years ago, I was struck by its combination of grandeur and intimacy, the glorious views south and west from its soaring sash windows, and by the perilous condition in which it stood. Two things were immediately clear: it needed urgent action to arrest its decay and – if we could just raise the necessary funds – it would make the most spell-binding place to stay."
Funding has already been made available to the project thanks to the H B Allen Charitable Trust and generous donations from early project Guardians means that over 70% of the necessary funds have already been secured.
The 1st Marquess completed Wentworth Woodhouse by 1748 as a seat of regional and national power. Charles Wentworth-Watson, 2nd Marquess, who was twice Prime Minister and instrumental in American independence, then set to work on its lavish interiors.
The South Tower, with its glorious parlour, was chosen by the 2nd Marchioness of Rockingham to be her personal retreat. The parlour itself is a single room in the upper part of the tower, which the Marchioness, Mary Watson-Wentworth, probably used mostly in summer. Under her direction in the mid-1770s the architect John Carr of York completed its interior, with its marble chimney piece, oval plaster reliefs of antique subjects and beautiful decorative ceiling. A contemporary inventory indicates that it was used both for business and entertaining. At her sycamore writing table the Marchioness wrote copious letters, including many to her husband, in whose political career and Whig ministry she played an important role.
After its aristocratic heyday in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when over 1,000 guests would attend legendary receptions and parties, Wentworth Woodhouse fell into disrepair. Open-cast coal mining in the 1940s and 50s came to within yards of the building’s rear façade and after a series of family tragedies it narrowly avoided demolition. A late reprieve, in its use as a training college for women PE teachers, ended in 1988 and by the early 21st century it was increasingly dilapidated and its future highly uncertain once again.
Landmark Trust website
Wentworth Woodhouse website
Images: WWPT / Landmark Trust / Olivia Brabbs
Socials