Later History
With the extinction of the earldom with the third earl in 1799, the house and all the Wentworth estates including Wentworth Woodhouse, passed to William FitzWilliam, 4th Earl FitzWilliam, then to members of the Vernon-Wentworth family. The paintings were sold by Captain Bruce Canning Vernon-Wentworth at Christie's, 13 November 1919. Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, who had no direct heirs, sold the estate to Barnsley Corporation in 1948. Wentworth Castle was emptied at a house sale, and the estate was divided up. The house was a teacher training college until 1978 and then was used by Northern College. It was featured in the Victoria and Albert Museum's exhibition "The Country House in Danger". The great landscape that Walpole praised in 1780 was described in 1986 as now "disturbed and ruinous", the second earl's sinuous river excavated in the 1750s reduced to a series of silty ponds,.
Wentworth Castle is the only Grade I Listed Gardens and Parkland in South Yorkshire. The Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust was formed in 2002 as a charity with the aim “To undertake a phased programme of restoration and development works which will provide benefit to the general public by providing extensive access to the parkland and gardens and the built heritage, conserving these important heritage assets for future generations”. Today, the landscape is gradually being restored by the Trust. The restoration of the Rotunda was completed in 2010, the parkland has been returned to deer park. The restoration of the Serpentine will form a future project as funding allows.
The estate opened fully to visitors in 2007, following the completion of the first phase of restoration, which cost £15.2m. The Gardens at Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park are open 7 days a week year round (closed Christmas Day and Boxing Day). Information for visitors, groups and schools and the latest information on restoration progress is available from the Trust's website on www.wentworthcastle.org Tours of the house are available by arrangement.
Wentworth Castle was featured on the BBC TV show "Restoration" in 2003, when an attempt was made to restore the Grade 2* Listed Victorian Conservatory to its former glory. Unfortunately, the Conservatory did not win in the viewers' response; subsequently, the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust took the decision in 2005 to support the fragile structure further with a scaffold in order to prevent its total collapse. The Trust succeeded in raising the £3.7million needed to restore the Conservatory in 2011 and work began in 2012, with grants from English Heritage, the Country Houses Foundation, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the European Regional Development Fund. The Trust hopes to complete the restoration of its fragile Victorian Glasshouse in 2013 – 10 years on from its first TV appearance the Restoration Series.
Read more about this topic: Wentworth Castle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)