‘In 2018 the bill to restore the house was £200m – there’s no point putting a figure on it now’

Great Estates: welcome to Wentworth Woodhouse, so big its guests were given confetti to find their way back to their rooms

There is very little on the road to Wentworth in South Yorkshire, four miles from Rotherham, to suggest that one of the country’s biggest stately homes is nearby.
Only the sight of a 30-metre tower, the Hoober Stand, built to commemorate the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1748, hints that a very big house might be approaching.
Even in Wentworth village itself, there are few signs. Through the gate and past the stables, Wentworth Woodhouse reveals itself – all 606 feet of its east front, tarnished by coal dust.
Wentworth was the private home of the Fitzwilliam family until the Second World War. Then, like so many big houses, change came to its doors – not in the form of visitors brandishing guidebooks, but thanks to what is perceived to be class spite.
The Fitzwilliams were coal magnates, politicians and local dignitaries; kings of South Yorkshire brought down in the end by what sustained them when, after the war, the newly-elected Labour government barged in demanding coal from beneath the gardens.
In April 1946, Wentworth’s then-custodian Peter Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam DSC, tried to fight it but Clement Attlee was unmoved and the result was critical damage to the gardens, still evident today.
Two years later, Peter was killed in a plane crash. The title passed to his first cousin once removed, Eric Fitzwilliam, then to Tom Fitzwilliam, 10th and last Earl Fitzwilliam and the house was sold – in 1988, again in 1998, and then, in 2017 to its current owner, the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, thanks to a grant of £7.6m from then chancellor Philip Hammond in the November 2016 Budget.
Ever since, the trust’s chief executive Sarah McLeod has been hard at work bringing this forgotten palace back to life.
The site that McLeod took on had fallen into deep disrepair. The house had asbestos in the cellar, dry rot around every corner and an extremely leaky roof, to say nothing of the ruined 18th century camellia house and the wrecked Grade I-listed stables.
When McLeod and I first met in 2018, her masterplan had an estimated completion cost of £200m. Now, she says, there’s no point trying to come to an estimate: “Building costs are 25pc higher now than they were even two years ago.”
Having made the house safe for visitors, the latest project to be completed launches to the public on April 2: the restoration of the camellia house as a global tea house.
When it opens, members of the public will be able to sit and enjoy tea in what was once Lady Rockingham’s tearoom below the 200-year-old camellia shrubs. It looks every inch the modern-day visitor attraction, quite the turnaround from the run-down building with a jagged glass roof that the trust inherited.
With it, says McLeod, “we wanted to show people that we could take an entire building and bring it back into use. It’s on a small scale in the big scheme of Wentworth, but it will be a fabulous community asset.”
Big is the theme of Wentworth: the house is not just one very large house but, in effect, two, built as a result of a family feud.
When William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Stafford, died in 1695 he left the Wentworth estate to his nephew Thomas Watson rather than his male-line heir Thomas Wentworth, who became Lord Raby.
Enraged by this, Raby set about trying to outdo Thomas Watson and in 1708 he bought Stainborough Hall near Barnsley, which he renamed Wentworth Castle.
After Thomas Watson-Wentworth died in 1723, his son, also called Thomas, later created 1st Marquess of Rockingham, became Raby’s chief rival.
In 1725 he began building a west-facing baroque mansion at Wentworth, hoping to impress his Whig allies, but by the time it was finished Baroque was out – and Palladian was in. Rockingham responded by building a second house to replace the first one – on the same site but facing the other way.
This was much more impressive, with a 19-bay central block, two wings and a pavilion on each end. When Rockingham died in 1750, Wentworth passed to his son the future prime minister Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. When he died without issue in 1782, Wentworth passed to his nephew William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam.
Many myths have emerged about Wentworth Woodhouse.
There are said to be 365 rooms in the house: more likely is that there are about 400 “spaces” rather than rooms. There are said to be five miles of corridors, a figure rubbished by McLeod and it is often said, with little evidence, that Anna Pavlova danced at Wentworth in 1912.
It is also often described as the biggest house in the country, but Stowe has more rooms and is six metres longer. Still, the house is delicious, a beguiling maze that not so long ago one would have hummed with armies of domestic staff passing old masters on the walls and the great and good in the state rooms. It is no wonder that the Fitzwilliams gave out confetti for guests to sprinkle in order to find their way back to their bedrooms.
McLeod, like the original builders of Wentworth, does not lack ambition. Now the camellia house is complete, the transformation of the stables is next – into a new visitor entrance, with a cafe, events space and a training kitchen to address local skills shortages.
After the stables will come the conversion of the former bachelor wing, known as “Bedlam”, into overnight accommodation, the restoration of the chapel and the installation of a lift in the main house.
McLeod says her aim is to create a “world-class destination”.
“We want to create something that the people of South Yorkshire feel proud of,” she says.
Although the house wasn’t open to the public during the Fitzwilliams’ time, the inclusion of locals was something they practised in their own way: the park was always open.
In the early 20th century, as former scullery maid May Bailey remembered, “you could go anywhere. You could walk right up’t Wentworth House. You couldn’t go in, mind, but you could stand right in front of ’t.”
But large numbers of visitors alone will not pay for the restoration works, she McLeod.
“I don’t believe that we’re ever going to be able to generate the funds for the regeneration of Wentworth through trading.”
Instead, her aim is to regenerate Wentworth through fundraising, and once complete, “it needs to be self-sustaining, and able to support its ongoing maintenance. It is completely possible, but you’ve just got to get to that point.” 
The camellia house at Wentworth Woodhouse opens April 2; wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk