Wentworth Woodhouse is in the news again. The Palladian pile, near Rotherham, has been sold to an investment company, a decision that dashes for ever the dreams of the trust that hoped to save it for the nation. I don’t suppose there are many readers who share my intense interest in both the South Yorkshire coalfields, and the sort of houses that come with a room for every day of the year. But if this weird Venn diagram does apply to you, I recommend Catherine Bailey’s Black Diamonds (2007), which tells the story not only of the family that built Wentworth, but also of the industry on which its wealth was built.
One scene has always stayed with me: I offer it as a taster. In 1912 George V and Queen Mary visited Wentworth, their host, its owner, the seventh Earl Fitzwilliam. Their stay began with a 13-course dinner served by liveried footmen; pudding involved sugar baskets that had taken three days to weave. The following morning, the couple visited several pit villages, a programme carried out even after the King had received the news that at nearby Cadeby colliery an explosion had killed dozens.
If it’s appalling to read of the “gratitude” of the people of Cadeby to the King that day – somehow he brought himself to shake hands with men whose faces were still black with dust – it’s even grimmer to read the thank you he wrote to Fitzwilliam once he’d returned south. He had been “comfortable” at Wentworth, and had enjoyed the “experience” of the West Riding. The disaster at Cadeby, however, had seemingly already slipped clean from his mind.
