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To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
Wentworth Woodhouse: New evidence concerning the design and furnishing of the Yorkshire ‘Palace’
by Peter Brown MBE, FSA
Described by Nicholas Pevsner as ‘the finest Georgian Mansion in Great Britain with exceptional interiors’, he gives no clue to why these interior spaces deserved such an accolade?
With the tremendous help of those at Sheffield Archive, who hold a large collection of inventories, papers, drawings and invoices relating to the Mansion, together with others at the Warburg Institute, Sir John Soane Museum, the RIBA library and indeed, those in the Society of Antiquaries library, the resultant investigation has revealed a wealth of design sources, inspiration and correspondence that shed new light on this question.
The mansion as we know it today is the result of three great families, the Straffords, the Rockinghams and the Fitzwilliams all working with a range of eminent architects including Lord Burlington, Henry Flitcroft, James Stuart and John Carr.
Previously unseen and unpublished drawings in the family collection illustrate a high degree of sophistication and ingenuity, the results being admired by antiquarians and historians at the time.
Country Life photographs of the early twentieth century are useful in illustrating the main rooms replete with its contents, but it is the emergence of a rare colored pictorial inventory, compiled in 1870 which records in accurate detail the 258 works of art at Wentworth Woodhouse and provides such a helpful resource.
The inventory also gives the location of each painting within the mansion and a later hand records (c.1950) an eventual dispersal . This information will be useful for detailed research in the future.
In the 1940s a number of tragedies befell the Fitzwilliam family and the mansion itself, resulting in a large range of sales of contents from 1948 onwards.
The later Christies sale catalogues from the 1980s are helpful in providing images of the silver, sculpture, furniture and soft furnishings only previously known by a one line entry in an inventory.
This illustrated talk will chart the evolution of the building itself, from the Elizabethan period to the present day and attempt to populate the interiors with furniture supplied by Benjamin Goodison, Wright &Elwick and others, soft furnishings supplied by William Bradshaw and touch upon the paper hangings and unexecuted designs by Thomas Bromwich.
The new Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust has been most helpful in the preparation of this talk and contributing to the subsequent book (no date fixed as yet, still more work to do) and for giving permission to include much of the photography.
This event will be both in person at Burlington House and online. Please select the appropriate ticket below.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]