The Dukeries

The Dukeries was a district in the county of Nottinghamshire which was so called because it used to contain four ducal seats close to one another. It is south of the town of Worksop which has been called The Gateway to the Dukeries. The ducal seats were:

• Clumber House: principal seat of the dukes of Newcastle
• Thoresby Hall: principal seat of the dukes of Kingston and later of the Earls Manvers of the same family.
• Welbeck Abbey: principal seat of the dukes of Portland
• Worksop Manor: a seat of the dukes of Norfolk

There was a fifth large country house in the Dukeries, Rufford Abbey, but it was never the seat of a duke. Bestwood Lodge. a seat of the dukes of St Albans, was also in Nottinghamshire, but over 15 miles (24 km) to the south of the core Dukeries area. The Dukeries was remarkable not only for the number of ducal families in proximity to each other, there being at most times fewer than one English ducal family for each two English counties, but also because the parks of the various houses were largely contiguous, rather than being separated from one another by miles of farmland, as is usually the case with the parks of major country houses in England, whether ducal or not.

Welbeck Abbey is the only house that remains in traditional ownership. Until 2005 the abbey was leased to the Ministry of Defence and occupied by the Army Sixth Form College, while the descendants of the last Duke of Portland occupied a secondary house in the park called Welbeck Woodhouse, which was built for the 7th duke in the early 1930s when he was Marquis of Titchfield. It is three quarters of a mile to the north east of the main house, and while much smaller than the abbey, is some 200 feet (61 m) long.

The incumbent Duke of Norfolk sold Worksop Manor to the Duke of Newcastle in 1839. The Norfolks preferred to spend more time at Arundel Castle and the Duke of Newcastle only wanted the land to enlarge his estate, so he had the main part of the house demolished. However the service wing was adapted into a smaller (but still substantial) country house later in the 19th century, which survives. Clumber Park was demolished by the Dukes of Newcastle in the 1930s because they could no longer afford to live there, but the large Victorian chapel survived, and the 3,800-acre (15 km2) park now belongs to the National Trust. Thoresby Hall opened as a country house hotel early in the 21st century after a long period of neglect.