Lady Mary …

…at Wentworth Woodhouse.

I’ve had a fascination for Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire since I read the excellent book ‘Black Diamonds’ by Catherine Bailey featuring the Earls Fitzwilliam  and their coal dynasty. 

We visited during lockdown but could only access the extensive grounds without a special booking for the house and at the time they were just removing the scaffold from several years work on the roof. As we left the chap on the door said they were two years into 30 years of work! 
Only the main public  rooms are accessible and we went today as there was an exhibition in these rooms showing costumes from recent productions that have used the house for filming.
 
The main room shown is the Marble Saloon one of the rooms I particularly wanted to see. (  A contemporary of mine came here when it was Lady Mabel College for Physical Education between 1950 and 1977. Believe it or not they used the Marble Saloon as a place to play Badminton!)
 Here you can see it displaying some costumes from Downton Abbey. The room was used for ballroom scenes for the series and was also used in The Crown to represent a scene where the Queen visited The Kremilin.

Other costumes on show were from, Gentleman Jack, Victoria, Wives and Daughters and some others I hadn’t heard of.

The dress in the thumbnail will look familiar to many as Lady Mary’s cocktail dress at one of the balls from the the first film filmed here.

There were two short films showing how various places were used including an area where they removed tarmac to reveal the original cobles and create a ‘back streets of London’ feel for something called The Irregulars to do with Arthur Conan Doyle.

All this of course can provide a great source of revenue for this magnificent property’s restoration.

We took a walk around the grounds as it has been quite a decent bright and blowy day and then we returned to the cafe, where we’d had coffee, to get some lunch.

A throughly enjoyable visit. This exhibition has been on since September and ends this weekend. As NT members we got in for half price.

The facade of the building is one of the biggest in Europe - top right, and was used for Buckingham Palace in the series Victoria. 

More on the website here it has just been confirmed that the house has the longest facade of any house in the country