Wentworth Woodhouse - Sold By Fitzwilliam Family

Sold By Fitzwilliam Family

By 1989 the house was in a poor state of repair. With the Polytechnic no longer a tenant, and with the family no longer requiring the house, the family trustees decided to sell the house and the 30 acres (120,000 m2) surrounding it, but retained the Wentworth Estate's 89,000 acres (360 km2) of productive land. The house was bought by locally-born businessman Wensley Grosvenor Haydon-Baillie, who started a programme of restoration; however a business failure caused it to be repossessed by a Swiss bank and put back on the market in 1998. The present owner is Clifford Newbold, an architect from Highgate, who bought it for something over £1.5 million. Mr Newbold has clearly undertaken and is progressing with a defined programme of renovation/restoration as evidenced in two recent editions of Country Life magazine dated 17 February and 24 February 2010. Much of the garden is operated as a country park by Rotherham council.

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