Stainborough Castle – England - Atlas Obscura

Stainborough Castle

From a distance this castle ruin looks real enough but up close everything looks a little too small 

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Tucked away in a corner of the gardens of Wentworth Castle near Barnsley,  England, (itself a large country house, rather than a real castle) is an impressive folly that reflects the vanity of the 18th century English gentry.

Having failed to inherit the nearby impressive mansion known as Wentworth Woodhouse (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wentworth-woodhouse) as he expected, Thomas Wentworth,  Baron Raby (later  the 1st Earl of Stafford),  bought a nearby estate and attempted to produce a house to rival the building that he so clearly coveted.

On the footprint of an earlier (17th century) building, built by Sir Gervaise Cutler, he created a large house to compete with that of his distant relative (through marriage) Thomas Watson who he considered had usurped his birthright.

This house now forms the basis of Northern College, an educational establishment. Ironically, given Thomas Wentworth’s well known involvement  with the Atlantic slave trade, the college focuses  on courses with a social purpose and has close links with the Trades Union movement. 

In the gardens of his new house, between 1727 and 1731, Wentworth created a magnificent folly in the form of a castle ruin,  so as to justify the adoption of the name “Wentworth  Castle” for the estate and thus get one up on his social rival. Despite all his efforts ongoing development at Wentworth  Woodhouse ensured that Wentworth  Castle was always second best. The folly itself has become known as Stainborough Castle.

The gardens are currently owned and operated by the National Trust and visitors to the gardens are able to access the folly which look remarkably like the ruins of a medieval castle  except that when you are within the “ruins” everything  looks a little smaller than it should be. However it is  not so small that it could not have been a genuine defensive structure and the effect is rather disconcerting.

Whatever the origin of the “castle” this is an enchanting space and it is surrounded by magnificent gardens and parkland that would be worth a visit even without this impressive  folly. Within one of the large conservatories is a famous ( or infamous) lead statue of an African Slave which was constructed  to celebrate  Wentworth’s success in maintaining Britains slave trading interests in the Treaty of Utrecht. In recent times the status of this statue has become controversial  but the information  provided at least acknowledges the darker side of the source of the wealth  which created the estate that we see today.

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