1/4 Wentworth Woodhouse (Ep4) - The Country House Revealed

our great country houses the most familiar and yet intriguing sites Britain has to offer standing like Sentinels in the landscape hundreds of thousands of us visit them every year but not all are open to the public I've been granted the privileged opportunity to pass through the portals of six of our greatest country houses normally hidden from public view they've seen five centuries of British history up close and personal the families who built these houses play their part in great Affairs of State Central to their dreams the great house the ultimate data symbol but all to often also the ultimate money drainer few of these families went the distance but their houses did with their secrets intact this is their story but it's also our story for these houses offer a guided tour of our nation's hidden [Music] history [Music] I'm on my way to see one of the largest privately owned country houses in Europe it's also one of the most secretive it's been shrouded in mystery for years in fact I'm heading towards um towards Yorkshire and the house is called Wentworth Woodhouse and it's been the center of intrigue and family feuding since it was built in the 18th century [Music] but this is more than a story of a family or a building it's a story of the time in the 18th century when the Country House became a vital Cog in the Machinery of [Applause] power almost an engine of State designed to dominate the [Music] land and the great families that owned these powerhouses ran the nation Wentworth Woodhouse would play a vital role in a struggle between two competing parties two royal families indeed two ideas of just what it meant to be British and the results of this struggle would shape not just the house they would do much to form the modern world a history that still echoes in the corridors of this spectacular building arguably the most artistically breathtaking ever created in Britain a house that today is largely forgotten but which was once one of the most important and Powerful places on [Music] Earth [Music] the visitors to W with Woodhouse were often take this to be the main house but in fact when with wood house is so big the family that made it so wealthy that this is just a stable [Music] block [Music] my word an incredible piece of architectural [Music] theater just about the biggest classical Country House in Britain debated to degree I mean so large is this building so surrounded by myth that it's Uncharted Territory even it actual size down agrees upon [Music] I guess the house could never have looked more stunning than today it's like being in it's in Petersburg isn't it in the winter absolutely [Music] beautiful Wentworth Woodhouse once sat in the center of a 19,000 acre estate and the the family that created it has roots here dating back to at least the 13th [Applause] century the house was built largely between 1724 and 1750 the public had never been allowed inside to witness its palatial Grandeur most visible in the room I'm heading to now the very heart of Wentworth Woodhouse [Music] this is the marble Hall absolutely stunning in the 1760s it was called the finest room in England and um I think it is certainly very handsome this way it's a Hy to neoclassical civilization it's also rather surprising to find such a huge room in a private house it measures 60t Square square and Rises 40 ft of a besides cubic proportion it feels very sculptural it feels rather like an outside space I mean it's the heart of the home it's like a square like a Piaza strange and of course that reason one can understand why naughty children used to roll a skate across the marble floor and also was in this room in 1912 that Anna Pavlova d for George the F and Queen Mary what an appropriate event for such a glorious and ostentatious space for two centuries Wentworth Woodhouse hosted many such Royal visits some Drew immense crowds of over 20,000 people but the gods that raised the family High were ultimately against them and in the 20th century their glittering life here came to an [Music] end they sold the house in 1989 and just over 10 years ago was bought by Clifford newold a retired architect he's already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to return Wentworth Woodhouse to its former Splendor we wanted a great building but hadn't been modernized at all we decided that we'd really fallen in love with the place and it's just what we were looking for just the type of work that we wanted to do and to restore it and get it back on its feet again a few days later after we done our completion I came up here to receive the key of the door the key of the door imagine it was pretty to get in but sure enough I came up here and he presented me with a key of of the door you wouldn't believe it but the key of the door was a simple Yale key this and I was terribly disappointed so when I'd finally taken over I was sorting around the house and what did I find the key of the door that's more like it isn't it that's a that's more appropriate for a house of this size that's a lovely 18th century key but I'm got to say I'm full of admiration I mean you're talking about buying this house of uh you know sort of nage building you were actually buying just about the biggest house in brid I know I know I know I know it's big but I felt that uh and you was quite capable of financing it and also uh doing the work should we start down the new BS are living in one small section of the house while they restore the rest they've given me free reain to poke around and [Music] explore because of Wentworth woodhouse's sheer scale it really does take time to get to know it's often said to have 365 rooms one for every day of the year the actual number is closer to 305 but so large is the place no one can seem to agree on the exact [Music] figure in the past some rooms had remarkably specialized functions one was devoted solely to the preparation of candles another to the family Barber linking them were vast stretches of corridor in Victorian times guests were given confetti to lay a trail from their bedroom to dinner so they could find their way [Music] back photographs from Country Life magazine in 1906 show the house in its full Splendor when his epic scales seem still to have a purpose a world now [Music] vanished this part of the house is extraordinary echoing rooms emptiness none of the Grand Furniture you might expect to find in House of this palacial architectural quality and indeed in this Splendid room Dey an air of Abandonment how Lost In Time the way uncanny otherworldly Wentworth Woodhouse has struggled to find a role in the modern world in part because of its enormous size well over 100,000 square ft which leads you to ask just what inflated Ambitions produced it in the first [Music] place The Story begins with one of the bitterest family feuds the country has ever seen because the house wouldn't exist without a fateful decision taken by one man William Wentworth the second Earl of straford commemorated here alongside his wife in The Village Church straford owned the Wentworth estate but in 1695 he died childless and in an astonishing act for the time reported even to have shocked the king he disinherited his eldest male air incredible he is the man that made the momentous decision to leave went to the Woodhouse his land his fortune not to the male Heir when he died in 1695 but to the third son of his sister but why we do not know why he made this strange and very I say provocative decision did he simply want to give the younger son of his sister a chance in life is tremendously moving being here in the presence of the man that ultimately made a decision that gave life and birth to the creation of one of the most beautiful houses in Britain but the beauty of the house is only matched by the fury of the feud that created it a feud between two cousins both called Thomas on on the one hand the hot tempered Thomas Wentworth also known as Lord rabby a diplomat and army officer outraged by his lost inheritance on the other one of the luckiest men in the country Thomas Watson who has gifted this enormous estate the historian Patrick AES has studied the feuds every twist and turn can you tell me about the uh Family Feud that resulted from the disputed inheritance of WW withth wood house yes that was that ran and ran for half a century the this Feud and it outraged Thomas Wentworth and he was you know apoplectic about it for the rest of his life a bitterness I mean it becomes extreme is it true that Lord Raby called the Wentworth family Vermin indeed he instructed his agent to use code names and he said that um the principal will be known as Vermin and of course what's fascinating uh is that this rivalry becomes expressed dramatically through architecture absolutely in fact to mean the great inheritance of this rivalry is the fact that South yor is a wash on these two Estates with fantastic architecture monuments and Landscape gardening so one buying with the other absolutely although wward Woodhouse is the most spectacular product of this rivalry it began 5 miles away here at stra when Lord rabby bought this Yorkshire estate he was plotting Revenge livid not just about losing Wentworth but also that his cousin seemed to be stealing the family name plain old Thomas Watson had taken to calling himself Watson Wentworth in retaliation rabby changed the name of the existing house here from stra to Wentworth castle and then he started secretly to buy up land neighboring the Wentworth Woodhouse estate this was Turf War if he couldn't inherit wentw Woodhouse he was

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 201,566

Keywords: Country House, Wentworth Woodhouse (Building), Dan Cruickshank

Id: 3BdzsiE5UI0

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2013