Wentworth Castle
The property formerly known as Stainborough Castle was bought by Thomas Wentworth in the early 18th Century. Wentworth Castle was the seat of a separate branch of the family at Stainborough. He had the place completely rebuilt and subsequently renamed it Wentworth Castle but then, confusingly, he built a folly for his amusement in the grounds that he then named Stainborough Castle. Not to be confused with Wentworth Woodhouse and the village of Wentworth. Here are pictures from the neighbourhood that show the 18th Century Wentworth Castle:
The south-facing façade.
Here is a landscape shot of the sham castle that Thomas had built.
A further landscape view of Wentworth Castle, from the estate's ornamental "temple"/rotunda.
The ornamental temple.
This obelisk (unfortunately photographed in shadow) is a monument to a member of another local aristocratic family: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, from where she brought back the concept of inoculation against smallpox. Disfigured by the disease herself, she had also lost a brother to smallpox and was keen to spare others—especially her children—the same fate.
The folly, Stainborough Castle.
Taken from the Stainborough Castle folly (looking south over industrial South Yorkshire—the aristos certainly knew where to build), this view reminds me of Houseman's resonant poem Into My Heart an Air That Kills, just as applicable here in Yorkshire, though he published it in A Shropshire Lad (1896):
Into my heart an air that kills That is the land of lost content, |
I'm at an age where musing on youth brings a pang in addition to the distance from my home county and the relative infrequency of my presence there.
Also see Wentworth, South Yorkshire.
Part of Roaming South Yorkshire.