Wentworth Woodhouse: The House, the Estate and the Family

Melvyn Jones · Joan Jones · Stephen Cooper

iyn 2021 · Pen and Sword History

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It was the home of a knight, a baron, a viscount, two marquises and nine earls. The family had estates not only in South Yorkshire, but also in North Yorkshire, the Midlands and Ireland, at their greatest extent covering nearly 120,000 acres. One head of household was beheaded. Another saw one of the last wolves in the British Isles. One owner built the Palladian mansion at Wentworth, which has the longest frontage of any country mansion in Britain, and was one of the earliest growers of pineapples in this country. One head of family was prime minister. Twice. Another provided financial assistance to more than 6,000 of his Irish tenants and their families to emigrate to Canada during the Great Famine. Another had a christening attended by 7,000 official guests. Yet another bought an ocean liner to go and search for buried treasure in the Pacific. This copiously illustrated book explores the history of the house, the estate and the family over more than 400 years, drawing on a wide variety of sources, particularly the family records (the Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments) held in Sheffield Archives.

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Melvyn Jones is a local and landscape historian. He was appointed Visiting Professor in landscape history at Sheffield Hallam University in 1999. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of South Yorkshire including The Making of the South Yorkshire Landscape (2000), Historic Parks and Gardens in and around South Yorkshire (with Joan Jones, 2005) and Trees and Woodland in the South Yorkshire Landscape (2012) , all for Wharncliffe Books. Stephen Cooper is an Oxford graduate, lawyer and civil servant who has previously written on life in eighteenth-century England and on English crime and criminals in the nineteenth century. But his main interest has always been in medieval history, and he has made a close study of the Hundred Years’ War and of mercenary warfare in medieval Italy. His most recent book is Sir John Hawkwood: Chivalry and the Art of War. He currently lives in Yorkshire.