260 WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE, YORKS. 



daughter, Anne, married Earl Fitzwilliam, and carried Went- 

 worth House into her husband's family in 1/69. Flitcroft 

 published a drawing of the principal front of the house at the 

 end of the 1770 edition of Kent's " Designs of Inigo Jones," and 

 in the main this design was carried out. The central and chief 

 part of the facade was executed as drawn, but the two wings, 

 while preserving their original disposition, were considerably 

 improved. 



The stately front (Fig. 179) is some 600 ft. in extent, and 

 is the more striking in that it is a continuous facade, and not 

 broken up into the usual three parts, consisting of the house and 

 two outlying wings. The memory of the old curved colonnades 

 is preserved in the convex portions which connect the end 

 towers with the front. The central block is not so much an 

 adaptation as a copy of Campbell's second design for Wanstead 

 (" Vit. Brit," i. 24, 25), with the omission of the cupola and of one 

 window in the length of the wings. It is rendered personal to 

 the builder by the introduction of his arms in the pediment, and 

 the Wentworth motto, " Mea gloria fides," in the frieze. To 

 whatever extent Flitcroft may have borrowed his materials, it 

 cannot be denied that he has blended them together with noble 

 results. 



In the interior there is a fine saloon (Fig. 180), which recalls 

 Campbell's stone hall at Houghton. Its variety of treatment is in 

 strong contrast to the cold-looking hall which contains the stair- 

 case (Fig. 181). Both these apartments have the defect of their 

 qualities. There is so much architecture that there is scarcely 

 room for those homely touches which endear a house to its 

 occupants. The architect is more in evidence than the family. 

 The splendour which stimulates the admiration of the stranger 

 palls upon the eye that sees it daily ; the feelings cease to 

 answer to the stimulus. Grand rooms like these seem to demand 

 an impossible series of grand functions, or at the least that old- 

 fashioned custom of keeping open house which once prevailed 

 at Wentworth Woodhouse. 



Another of the great mansions built about the same time as 

 Wentworth Woodhouse was Prior Park, near Bath, and here 

 again the result would appear to owe something to Campbell's 

 second design for Wanstead in so far as the great hexastyle 

 portico is concerned. The architect was John Wood, of Bath, 



