Wentworth Woodhouse discover another £370,000 of repairs are needed to Yorkshire stately home

The Grade I-listed ancestral seat of the Fitzwilliam family, near Rotherham, is already undergoing one of the largest heritage restoration projects in the UK.

Over £7.2million has been spent on repairing the mansion's leaking roof since the crumbling house was taken over by a charitable trust in 2017.

It was calculated that another £370,000 would be needed to bring them back to prime condition.

Historic England, who have worked with the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust for the past three years, agreed to provide £224,000 in grant funding to replace over 90 metres of ornate sandstone and limestone cornicing on the East Front of the house.

Another £10,000 came from the Freshgate Trust Foundation, a charity established by Sheffield steel magnate Harry Brearley in 1941.

The Liz and Terry Bramall Foundation, which the couple set up after selling Doncaster construction firm Keepmoat, donated £70,000 and a further £5,000 came from conservation charity the Leche Trust. An anonymous donor added another £50,000 to the pot.

The trust's CEO Sarah McLeod said: “We were dismayed to discover the cornice was in a much worse state than anticipated. Although small in comparison to the vast swathes of roof we have made safe, it was a big hurdle because we had no money for it.

“We needed to act before the £1.1million scaffold facilitating the mansion’s roof work begins to be taken down from May onwards. Waiting months to secure grants would have meant re-erecting the scaffold and doubling the budget.”

The timeline was tight, but the Trust managed to raise £359,000 of the £368,719 target within months.

One of its volunteers, former company secretary Jonathan Robinson, wrote his first ever bid for the Trust and secured the £10,000 from the Freshgate Trust Foundation.

“We are enormously grateful to all who rallied to the cause, but particularly to Historic England, who donated almost two-thirds of our target sum.

“We see the organisation as a crucial partner in our huge restoration task. It has already awarded us two grants of £30,000 to enable us to draw up plans to develop our Camellia House, riding school and stables and its York office have been our expert advisors for the last two years.”

Wentworth Woodhouse - what's the plan?

Wentworth Woodhouse is one of the largest private houses in England - its facade is longer than that of Buckingham Palace. It was the ancestral home of the Earls of Fitzwilliam, who derived much of their wealth from their mines and ironworks in the nearby village of Elsecar. They were one of the richest aristocratic families in the country, and in 1912 hosted King George V and Queen Mary at Wentworth during a royal visit to the industrial heartlands of Yorkshire.

After World War Two, the estate fell into decline. The seventh and eighth earls both died within years of each other in the 1940s - the son, Peter, in an air crash when he was just 38 years old. The title then passed to a cousin, but he died childless in 1952. The male line became extinct in 1979 when the tenth earl also died without an heir.

The remaining Fitzwilliams remained in an apartment at Wentworth while the house was leased to a women's PE teacher training college, Lady Mabel College, from the 1950s. By 1989, they had sold the house and grounds, although a branch of the family who live at Milton Hall, near Peterborough, still own the village of Wentworth and the estate farms, as well as the town of Malton in North Yorkshire.

The house was in private ownership until architect Clifford Newbold's death in 2015, when it went back on the market. There was talk of it becoming a luxury hotel until the WWPT, spearheaded by local businesswoman Julie Kenny, bought the house for the nation.

They have a 20-year masterplan which will eventually see all areas of the house and grounds open to the public.

Currently, a team of volunteers run tours of restricted areas of the house and gardens, and they have opened a tearoom and shop. An events programme has also been set up, with concerts, talks and film screenings. The house hosts weddings and appeared in a ballroom scene in the recent Downton Abbey film, which was inspired by the royal visit of 1912.

The gardens have been restored after years of neglect and staff discovered several rare camellias that are thought to be among the first generation of the species imported from Asia in the 18th century last year. The listed Camellia House will be restored and a cafe opened inside.

The stables and riding school, which were once classrooms and student facilities when the estate was leased by Sheffield City Polytechnic, are to be converted into an events venue.