Wentworth Woodhouse is the largest privately owned house in Europe, built in two sections by the Marquess of Rockingham in South Yorkshire. This is the East front.
The West front is a baroque style house which did not meet with its owner's approval after completion, so he built the Palladian style structure, which fit in with the prevailing norms of his aristocratic Whig friends.
On the series Victoria. one of many film projects set here.
We entered on the ground floor into a forest of pillars
holding up the floor in the marble hall above
A magnificent ballroom or site for banqueting
with a balcony for good viewing.
Adjacent rooms were elegantly appointed,,.
Above left, in the Whitstlejacket Room, they have hung a copy of the famous painting at Wentworth Woodhouse; on the right, the original by George Stubbs at the National Gallery, London. Whistlejacket was a champion racehorse owned by the family.
In the Van Dyke Room, a magnificent fireplace.
These rooms are used for tour groups, lectures, and weddings. The Trust hopes to refurnish them appropriately when suitable pieces are acquired.
For now, the reception rooms are easily set up for meetings, weddings, and banquets.
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On the upper floors, considerable repairs are needed, making a gigantic task for the new Preservation Trust.
One of the few bedrooms we saw...of the dozens and dozens in the house.
The Palladian window in the chapel
Here is the point at which the two houses meet, and the remaining bits of an earlier house, which include this Garden Gate, attributed to architect Inigo Jones.
The facade of the baroque house, quite handsome in its way, but apparently smacking of the wrong political and social mores.
Only a few remainders of the once-magnificent gardens are still in evidence, but the view from the South Terrace is lovely.
The 15-foot high "Punch Bowl," a gigantic urn, was illuminated for important functions. The folly below was designed in the style of an ionic temple.
The fascinating book about Wentworth Woodhouse and its families reads like a novel. It tells the whole story, great successes, hard time, dazzling fortunes, famous scandals and tragedies.
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