Guests from across the community are heading to Wentworth Woodhouse this week to find out how the stately home will become a ‘people’s palace’ for South Yorkshire.
The Yorkshire launch of the preservation trust’s Masterplan will be staged on Friday November 9 and a host of civic dignitaries, local MPs and representatives of heritage and arts experts from Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Worksop will also be attending.
The Masterplan, launched at Downing Street last month, is the visionary scheme which will steer the Grade I listed Georgian masterpiece in Rotherham to a new destiny. It represents the views of over 1,500 local people who took part in the consultation process.
Local community groups and businesses, schools and universities will be finding out how the mansion and other important heritage buildings on its site will be saved from crumbling into ruin and transformed into a world-class visitor destination and a provider of local jobs and training.
WWPT has revealed it took over ‘just in time’ in May 2017. Since then, over 100 structural surveys and repair works have revealed the extent of damage, decay and loss caused over many decades.
The trust aims to create a down-to-earth, community-focused stately home attraction which will boost the local economy.
A heritage construction skills training programme will create Wentworth’s own workforce, state rooms where nobility once slept will be rentable for the night, and holiday homes will be created in the house and stables.
Office and craft spaces, new cafes and restaurants will be created. Wedding parties, TV and film crews will continue to bring income.
Visitors will be able to view heritage and culture exhibitions, explore more of the house and take ‘hard hat and Hi Viz’ tours onto the rooftop to witness restoration work as it happens.
One of our priorities is to create a place where everybody feels welcome and can engage with this huge project. Wentworth Woodhouse belongs to us all,” said WWPT’s chair Julie Kenny CBE, the Rotherham businesswoman who founded the trust in 2014 and fought for three years to purchase the house from private ownership.
