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| NISG at WENTWORTH WOODHOUSE |
SOUNDING SPACE Wentworth Woodhouse
#025
South Yorkshire
Notes
compiled by Hildegard Brunel
Edited
by Dr. Stella Barrows
INTRODUCTION and OVERVIEW
Wentworth
Woodhouse has the distinction of having the longest façade of any country house
in England. It stands in 87 acres of gardens and boasts extensive views over
parkland including lakes and a deer park. It has around 365 rooms (one for
every day of the year).
In
the environs of this parkland we have heard conversational, melodic, ambient
and proto-historic sonic phenomena, which is not surprising as there has been a
house here in some form since Jacobean times. The building of Wentworth
Woodhouse as it now stands began in 1725. Builders would have lived on site, in
nearby villages or travelled from further afield in order to undertake the work
on the property.
The
house is comprised of two joined houses which form east and west fronts. The
east front façade is said to have been built as the result of a rivalry between
the Watson-Wentworths and the Stainborough-Wentworths (who owned nearby
Wentworth Castle).
In
World War Two, the mansion was taken over for use by Military Intelligence and
after 1945 with the Nationalisation of British Coal and the onset of open cast
coalmining in the garden made it undesirable for the family to return to.
This
is probably why the property is such a highly rich sounding space – the NISG
are more familiar with sedimentary sonic expulsions from the Mesozoic, but
these coal fields are from the
Paleozoic, (specifically carboniferous).
During
the Second World War the house acted as a Training Depot and Headquarters of
the Intelligence Corps, although by 1945 conditions for trainee intelligence
soldiers had deteriorated to such a state that questions were asked in the
House of Commons. Some of the training involved motorcycle dispatch rider
skills, as Intelligence Corps personnel often used motorcycles and therefore the
grounds of the house and surrounding road network were used as motorcycle
training areas.
It
is thought that this extensive disruption of subterranean strata has led to the
emergence of wider sonic phenomena, so it would be well worth keen amateur
sonic geologists keeping their ears peeled for other extraneous eruption events
beyond our specific (physical) field of study. 
20th CENTURY
The
greater part of the house was let in 1947 and by 1950, the house was used as a
Women’s Physical Education College for training teachers (the Lady Mabel
College of Physical Education). Legend has it that the Marble Saloon (the
principal room in the house) was used for badminton practice.
The
house sits on the Barnsley seam coalfield, and the postwar Labour government
ordered that coal should be mined from opencast mines within 100 metres of the
back of the building, making it an unattractive place for the family to live.
The house was leased to West Riding county council in 1947 and it was used as a
training college for female PE teachers until 1974 when it was taken over by
Sheffield City Polytechnic, which later became Sheffield Hallam University.
Following
local government re-organisation in 1974, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough
Council became the lessee and the property was taken over as a student campus,
for Sheffield Polytechnic College (now Sheffield Hallam University). Faced with
mounting costs, Rotherham paid to surrender the lease in 1988. The house and the
87 acres it sits within, were sold to W.G. Haydon-Baillie, in 1989. In 1998,
the property went back onto the open market and was bought by the Newbold
family in 1999, who continued in residence until 2017, when the property was
purchased by Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, on behalf of the nation.
GEOLOGY
The
bedrock that forms the foundations of Rotherham includes the Coal Measures of
late Carboniferous age and the Magnesian Limestone of Permian age. These two
rock sequences produce two contrasting landscapes of the Yorkshire Coalfield
and the South Yorkshire Magnesian Limestone Ridge that forms the eastern part
of Rotherham Borough.
The
Yorkshire Coalfield forms part of the East Pennine Basin, which forms the
reference type area for the late Carboniferous of Europe. Most of the
sandstones have been quarried for local building stone, including the
distinctive Rotherham Red sandstone.
MINING
Wentworth
Woodhouse is the former home of the Fitzwilliam coal mining family. The postwar
Labour government ordered that coal should be mined from opencast mines within
100 metres of the back of the building, making it an unattractive place for the
family to live.
Much
of the formal gardens and woodland were destroyed by post-war open cast mining
in the parkland and have only recently been revived – although there are
several ancient and important trees and bushes on Sounding Space #025 including
a Yew and a Mulberry Bush.
The
South Yorkshire Coal Fields are a series of mudstones, shales, sandstones,
and coal seams laid
down during the Carboniferous period about 350 million
years ago. The total depth of the strata is
about 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi). The house sits on the Barnsley seam
coalfield, an important coal field three meters thick, and is an excellent
conductive substrate for transmission and emission.
Into
the 2000s had fallen into a state of structural disrepair, partly because of
the number of mining shafts in the area. Some local people have it that the
house is sitting on rock somewhat akin to Swiss Cheese. The NISG purports that
this could be why we have so many emissions in this spot – a little like a
speaker with many vibrating holes. What is irrefutable is that this landscape
acts as something of a multifaceted channel for rich sonic deposits, and that
disruption has exposed a sonic transmission layer through which audible
geological phenomena can be recorded.
 |
| The Head Estate Gardener utilising Ear Trumpet Technology |
We
are unsure of the reasons for this forceful eruption event, although some of
the NISG team have been working on a thesis that the historic stimulation of
the coal seams through mining causes sonic venting, and this has been
re-stimulated by recent building work. This is the first mining landscape the
NISG team have worked on and it is excitingly rich and varied due perhaps to
the combination of historic house and rich industrial past.
WENTWORTH VILLAGE
Wentworth
village dates back to at least 1066 and the Norman invasion and it is featured
in the Domesday book. In about 1250 Robert Wentworth married Emma Woodhouse and
the family lived in the area for over 450 years. In the Church there is an
effigy of the Earl of Strafford, who was a supporter of the crown just before
the Civil war and who was beheaded on Tower Hill. In our early research phase
we perceived sounds of proto-historical battle emanating from the ground
beneath our feet – but we are unsure as to which conflict this relates to.
NOTE:
The
NISG are one of many organisations to declare a ‘Climate Emergency’. Obvious profound
environmental concerns notwithstanding, we are also deeply worried at the loss
of the integrity of sonic sounding spaces which have not yet been subject to
study. We feel immediate halt should be called to exploratory drilling for oil
or the process which is known as ‘fracking’. Who knows what incredible sonic
integrity will be lost otherwise! (Ed. Dr. Stella Barrows)