Last week nearly thirty of us had a fantastic day out at Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham. We had an amazing guide, full of character, who really brought the place alive, his knowledge of the history of Wentworth Woodhouse was vast.
Wentworth Woodhouse is actually two separate houses, the oldest house is from the 17th century, when the Earl of Stafford wanted something bigger he just built a whole new house in front in the 1700’s, it was later extended either side with new wings, and another Earl decided he didn’t have enough room so he added an extra floor on top of the whole house!! It now has the longest facade in Europe at 625′ which is about 11′ longer than when it was first built due to mining subsidence!
The interior is fascinating, it is seriously huge, I can see why they have a back marker on guided tours as you could quite easily get lost! The staircase up to the marble floor is beautiful, one of those that is a pleasure to walk up!
The marble hall is classic palladial proportions, 40′ by 40′ by 40′, a perfect cube.
The house is currently open for private tours but is also used a lot for filming by BBC, Bollywood etc.
The house needs a huge amount of work to restore it and it is a seriously big space to find a function for too, it’s fascinating to look around now and it would be great to return as the restoration progresses.
After the house tour we had a tour of the gardens and parkland. We walked via the ‘punchbowl’ which used to be lit by gas as a beacon!
It was great to have the tour outside afterwards as it helped to make sense of the different eras of the house, looking from the outside.
After our tour we took a short coach trip, round the corner, to Wentworth Garden Centre, which is much more than just a ‘garden centre’, but the plants were gorgeous too!! I resisted with difficulty but I want to go back!
We had a lovely lunch and then mooched round the courtyard shops before exploring the old gardens, they were beautiful, with an original bear pit, a maze planted in 2000…
an original duck house…
and an Italianate sunken garden.
Altogether we had a great day out, looking forward to our next trip 🙂
Askwith with Weston WI 
Totally agree it was a brilliant day Margaret. Good weather too. It certainly made us want to go back and take one of the other tours before too long.
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Fantastic blog Margaret. Our Pilates group thoroughly enjoyed the day, well planned with the bonus of lots of sunshine
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Fabulous day out. H
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