Wortley Hall
Wortley Hall in Yorkshire was a haunt of four generations of my family. The Hall had been the seat of the Earls of Wharncliffe until it was requisitioned by the British Army during the Second World war. In 1950 it was bought by a co-operative formed by Labour Party supporters and Trade Unionists for use as a centre for holidays, educational courses, conferences, and other social activities for their members. My father was one of the founding members of Wortley Hall's Club and it was a local focus of his social life for many years. As children, my brother and I would often accompany our parents and grandparents to Wortley where, bored by adult conversation, we would spend the light summer evenings exploring and playing in the extensive grounds, and the darker winter ones exploring the Hall and generally getting under the feet of residents. When my son was small, and we were visiting my Yorkshire family, he always enjoyed visiting the Hall and its grounds for the adventures they afforded.
The Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzies (the nobility displaced from the Hall) moved to a large modern home just outside the village. Like many of their caste, they had to sell portions of their estate to cover heavy Death Duties levied by the post-war Labour government (I suppose it helped the latter establish their progressive programme that included founding the NHS). My grandparents (ordinary working people though they were) lived in a handsome, rurally located, stone-built house that was purchased from the estate in the 1920s, so perhaps the local nobs were feeling the pinch even before the war.
Alan James (generally known as Carlton), the fourth Earl of that elevated clan, I knew slightly (or my parents did). He was a decent man, somewhat marooned by changing times and caught between competing forces. While maintaining a desire for an ordinary life (he stated a passion for getting his hands dirty under the bonnet of a car: "I would have been happier being a mechanic"), I don't think he understood his attachment to the inherited privilege that he possessed. Maybe it was that tension that made him unhappy. All the same, I found him friendly and helpful when my art school studies involved some investigation into local history.
Earlier members of the family had claims on history: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of Edward, British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, 1716-1718 (curiously, a position he managed to hold while still MP for Westminster, 1715-1722), introduced inoculation for smallpox to England (having witnessed its use in Turkey). There's a monument to her at nearby Wentworth Castle (not actually a castle, but the seat of another titled family).
There's an annual summer display of bright colour from rhododendrons in every imaginable shade of red, pink, mauve and white.
There are several specimens in my parents' garden grown from cuttings taken at the Hall.
Bad weather approaching Wortley Hall from the East.
This lawn below the path to the east of the Hall is a morning sun-trap and provides a view down the adjacent field to more rhododendrons that surround a secret, stone-lined ornamental pond. The ha-ha (a walled ditch) is to keep grazing sheep out of the Hall's grounds. The fields and distant rhodies don't belong to the Hall anymore but they may still be part of the Wharncliffe Estate. Below, the trees to the left lie within the immediate grounds of Wortley Hall:
A splendid feature of the gardens for us when we were children was the abundance of hidden dens. This picture is taken inside one: a yew tree. Thirty years after my brother and I used to hide in its dark interior, my son used to do the same.
For some years this Victorian iron gate was concealed by foliage. It could stand a little more attention. The view is to the south, onto The Flats.
A shady rockery. The ground rises and beyond is an ornamental pond.
Standing over the pond is an ancient oak that predates the Hall and its grounds by a couple of hundred years. Behind the low hedge next to the rhodies is the ice house (as you probably know, before refrigerators, great houses obtained ice in the winter from ponds such as this and stacked the blocks, insulated in straw, in a cool, subterranean ice house. Impressively, the ice would remain frozen for months). Its interior has now been filled-in with earth for safety's sake, but it was open to exploration when I was young.
Looking back to the oak and the pond, in the opposite direction this path leads to the house's great, walled kitchen garden, now revived and put to use.
Lavender bed. The gateway at the far end of the path leads into the hall's walled kitchen garden.
This is a view below the kitchen garden, with the stable buildings beyond the trees.
The stables accessed through the kitchen garden—a view somewhat spoiled by the parked cars of employees at the Hall. This is a fine building that deserves to be rescued from its increasing dereliction. There must be a dozen uses that it could serve in modern times. The façade on the other side is now very badly weathered and the dangerously deteriorating roof is obvious in this photograph. The handsome leaded cupola sits on a visibly rotting wooden framework and I fear it can't be long until the whole thing comes down. The neglect for decades of this building is the greatest of the two great sins perpetrated by the Hall's current management. The other is the recent construction, within the grounds near the pond, of a hard standing for a number of holiday caravans (trailers)! Why, if they must have such an eyesore, could it not have been hidden within the huge space of the walled kitchen garden? I can't fathom such an egregious lapse of sensitivity.
Façade of Wortley Hall. The gardens were a great playground.
Part of Roaming South Yorkshire.