Wentworth Castle

Wentworth Castle

A country house, now an adult education college, combining work from three distinct periods. The north front incorporates The Cutler House, built in 1670-2 for Sir Gervase Cutler II. The east wing dates from 1710-20 and was built by Johann Bodt for Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford. The south front dates from around 1760 and was commissioned by the 2nd Earl, William Wentworth, under the guidance of Charles Ross, with carving by John Platt of Rotherham. Eighteenth-century work was executed by Strafford estate masons. Nineteenth-century alterations and additions were made subsequently.

The 1670 house is constructed of ashlar sandstone with a lead roof. It comprises a double-pile structure wrapped around by a U-shaped range consisting of a Baroque-styled wing across the east end with an attached L-shaped Palladian-styled wing enclosing the south and west sides. The c1670 house itself is 3 storeys with basements and attics, spanning 7 bays. It has ashlar quoins, a plinth with basement windows (bays 6 and 7 retaining mullioned examples), and steps leading to a single-storey porch with rusticated quoins, a pulvinated frieze and cornice. The doorway within has a quoined architrave with keystone. Flanking 16-pane sashes have blocks to moulded sills with eared architraves and cornices linked by a string course. The central first-floor sash sits within a doorcase with keyed architrave and a scrolled pediment on plain corbels. The second floor features cross-windows with similar architraves and later casements. The eaves cornice has a 3-bay pediment with an architraved Diocletian window in the tympanum. The hipped roof carries two corniced ashlar stacks to the front slope and a similar stack to the front-right corner. A later wing on the right is linked by a 3-storey curtain wall, and an attached east wing projects 4 bays on the left.

The east front is 3 storeys with a 2:4:3:4:2 bay arrangement. The end and central projections have ground-floor quoins and giant Corinthian pilasters dividing the bays above. A central doorway with a later double door and fanlight featuring radial glazing bars sits beneath an archivolt with a carved keystone and garlands and instruments in the spandrels. Flanking 24-pane sashes have sills on doubled, baluster-shaped pilasters with architraves bearing consoled cornices. Other bays have later round-headed sashes in similar surrounds with the sills cut away. The first floor has a band, with central bays featuring aprons to large round-headed sashes with archivolts having head-carved keystones. Garter arms appear above the central bay, flanked by copious floral reliefs. Other bays have panelled aprons to 24-pane sashes in architraves with consoled segmental pediments. Squat attic windows with some unequally-hung 12-pane sashes have moulded sills to eared architraves. An entablature with dentilled and modillioned cornice and balustrade runs across. Three ashlar stacks are set to the rear above each 4-bay section. The 1670 house which has dressed sandstone and stone slates to the front carries ashlar sandstone to other elevations with lead roofs, while later additions have ashlar sandstone throughout with lead roofs.

The south front is 2 storeys with a basement, arranged as 1:3:5:3:1 bays with the 3-bay parts recessed. A plinth and rusticated basement support a central pediment on 6 giant Corinthian columns. Steps cross the central bays toward round-arched openings. The recessed bays have sashes with glazing bars in reveals, whilst bays 1 and 13 each have a 16-pane sash in a raised panel. The piano nobile features a deep band with balustraded aprons and linking string courses to the sills of sashes with glazing bars in architraves bearing bay-leaf friezes and pediments. Bays 1 and 13 have Corinthian Venetian windows. The attic contains 6-pane windows in architraves. A Strafford griffin and restrained carving ornament the pediment. An entablature and balustrade match the east front, with similar stacks set to the rear.

Interior

The 1670 house contains an entrance hall with a bolection-moulded fireplace with cornice and a wooden Jacobean overmantel. A matching door architrave on the left displays a fire-insurance plaque. Oak panelling with a carved frieze adorns the walls. The stair hall features a late 17th-century-style wooden staircase with foliage scrolls and cherubs in the balustrade, and acanthus-carved brackets to the newels. A front first-floor room, now subdivided, contains work from 1756 by Horace Walpole and Richard Bentley, including a chimneypiece with caryatids and moulded ceiling panels above a rich frieze with cherubs.

The east wing preserves much of its sumptuous 18th-century decorative scheme. A marble-floored entrance hall contains 4 Ionic columns and matching pilasters with bolection-moulded marble architraves to large 6-panel doors. Enriched cornices decorate the panelled ceiling, its centre panel depicting the Awakening of Aurora, attributed to Amigoni or possibly to Angelica Kauffman, with outer panels in the style of Clermont. A room to the north features lions on a marble chimneypiece, bay-leaf friezes to pedimented doorcases, and a panelled ceiling. End rooms of the east front are in Rococo style; the southern room has pilasters flanking the fireplace with Strafford insignia in the capitals, a modillioned cornice with corner shells and baskets of fruit, and a figure of Fame in the centre panel. The northern room features a figure of Plenty. An Italian staircase at the north end of the east front has a wrought-iron balustrade to a cantilevered stone staircase, pedimented doorcases, and rich plasterwork panels by Artari and Bagutti with medallions of Fame and Perseus and the 1st Earl. Eight busts of Roman emperors are set on the first-floor cornice. A long gallery by James Gibbs occupies the full length of the first floor and has marble-columned end screens and two fine chimneypieces, each with paired columns and a pediment with a griffin in the tympanum and 3 eagles above. Iron fire-baskets with brass enrichment are present. Windows of the central bays are flanked by Corinthian pilasters, with the southern Venetian window treated as on the exterior. The south front contains central ground-floor rooms linked by elliptical arches. A cantilevered staircase to the rear has an iron balustrade with an arcaded screen to the first floor. Notable painted ceilings appear on the first floor, some with geometric panelling, though ceilings at the east end have been lowered. The Strafford suite features ornate architraves with relief drops and a mirrored frieze to the vault with rose-trellis decoration.

Wentworth Castle was the seat of the Wentworth family, later the Vernon-Wentworths, until its purchase by Barnsley Corporation in 1948. It became the Northern College of Adult Education in 1978.