Wentworth Woodhouse: The Yorkshire stately home slowly revealing its many secrets

And more secrets of the house are set to be revealed after a year-long research project into its past.

On a mission to find out more about the house and the people who lived and worked there, the 10-strong volunteer research team and staff spent most of 2024 pouring through documents, ledgers and articles in the Rotherham and Sheffield Archives.

The team was determined to discover the truth behind some of the legends of Wentworth Woodhouse – such as whether its creator, the first Marquess of Rockingham, really did install a pond in his cellars so he could dine on fresh trout and bream year-round, and whether or not prima ballerina Anna Pavlova graced the dancefloor at the house.

The answers form the basis of the new Top to Bottom tour, which starts in the vaulted cellars where alcohol was kept from the 1800s.

Guides also reveal the high-jinks when the cellars were used as discos by students of the Lady Mabel College of Physical Education, which occupied a large chunk of the house from 1949-79.

Victoria Ryves, the trust’s head of culture and engagement, said: “Our researchers have unearthed a huge amount of information about Wentworth Woodhouse’s past life. In its heyday it was one of the most important houses in England, yet there is so much we don’t know about what happened here.”

Above stairs, the research has also uncovered details of the great effort and expense gone to when the second Marquess of Rockingham hosted a ball for George, the Prince of Wales, in 1789. According to a letter from an attendee, 8,250 oil lamps illuminated the Marble Saloon.

And there’s also new information on the story of how the household rushed to organise a wartime wedding in just two days for the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam’s daughter, Lady Elfrida, when her fiance unexpectedly got leave from the Front in 1918.

There was no time to send invitations, the tables were decorated with white rhododendrons from the gardens and white orchids from the greenhouses, and the wedding cake was decorated with guns and a cannon.

A second new tour, the After Hours Tour, is staged in evening candlelight twice a month and is running for a limited period only, taking visitors around scenes of the mansion’s grandest parties.

Ms Ryves said: “There are lots of surprises – such as the expensive mattress the 7th Earl had to order from London for the bed King George and Mary would be sleeping in.

“We shatter a few myths, too. The Marquess’s rumoured fish pond was probably just a water purification tank and Anna Pavlova’s ballet slippers never graced our marble floor.

“It was another Russian ballerina, Lydia Kyasht, who danced for the King and Queen.”