http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article1344546.eceFrom The Sunday Times
February 11, 2007
The mansion of mystery and malice
Wentworth Woodhouse, a Yorkshire stately home was ruined by lust and loathing. Now, after being shrouded in secrecy for years, its tale can be told
Tim Rayment
New Year’s Eve in a village in Yorkshire, and 2006 has minutes to live. In the pub, the old locals gather at the back and the new locals, with outsiders’ accents and fancier cars, are ordering rounds from bar staff dressed as superheroes.
This is not just any village. Down the road there is a house with 1,000 windows, occupied by a recluse. You’ve never heard of him. As the clock approaches 12, a single light burns through five of his ground-floor windows, so that when the rest of Britain welcomes 2007, only 0.005% of this vast residence has any sign of life.
Who, loitering here on other New Year’s Eves, could have guessed it would come to this? Who now cares, even? And yet this place has a story. It is a tale of the relentlessness of change, and the resilience of class hatred. Partly it is about forbidden love. But the real theme is revenge.
The house in the dark is Britain’s biggest stately home. Called Wentworth Woodhouse, it is a forgotten palace. Its recent past is shrouded in secrecy. In 1972, the aristocrat who lived here burnt 16 tons of family papers in a fire that lasted three weeks. Yet there are some facts nobody can conceal. From the front, it is twice as wide as Buckingham Palace. It has a room for every day of the year and five miles of underground passageways. Now, thanks to research worthy of an unsolved serial killing, its history can be told.
The tale takes us into a world of unimaginable privilege, and shows two sides of the Labour party that rules us: the noble, necessary Labour, born 100 years after it was needed to fight the injustices of the industrial revolution, and the vicious, spiteful Labour that resented the wealthy.
“We don’t understand why he won’t take part in things,” says Martyn Johnson, a retired detective among the New Year drinkers, who wrote a letter to the recluse that went unanswered. But then, there are many things about this hidden palace that, until now, nobody has understood.
Go six miles north of Sheffield and you will find it. From the village, take the path into Wentworth Park. First you see what seems to be a Georgian stately home, with dirty windows. This is merely a stable block for 100 horses: the house is round the corner. You are entitled to look – it is a right of way – and there was a time when everyone was welcome on the lawn in front of this building, although today you will be chased away as soon as you step from the path.
FULL story at link.
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