Yorkshire Sculpture Park

500 acres of fields, hills, woodland, lakes and formal gardens combine to create a beautiful landscape and stunning setting for Yorkshire Sculpture Park. But this landscape is not entirely natural. In fact it has been altered a lot in the last few hundred years, mainly for the families that have lived here since the land was listed as ‘waste’ in the Domesday Book.
Over this time many buildings have been built on site and many taken down. The landscape has been carefully designed and meticulously managed to look ‘natural’. Many of the top architects of their day have been involved in creating mansions, lodges, glass houses and follies here, including John Carr, Jeffry Wyatt (later Sir Jeffry Wyatville), William Atkinson and George Basevi Jnr. Landscape designers and gardeners, such as Richard Woods and Robert Marnock, have also had a lot of influence on what we see here today.

A number of characters stand out in the history of the Bretton Estate as being of particular interest. In the 16th century Sir Thomas Wentworth had a beautiful bed and furniture designed for Henry VIII in case he ever visited Bretton. In 1720 Sir William Wentworth built the Palladian mansion that forms the centre of today’s Bretton Hall. Sir William’s son, Sir Thomas Wentworth, created a lot of the parks and gardens around his father’s mansion, including having the River Dearne dammed and the lakes dug out. He is said to have been quite eccentric and often entertained guests on and around his lakes with firework displays, mock naval battles and plenty of alcohol. His illegitimate daughter, Diana Beaumont, more than doubled the size of the mansion in the early 19th century and had many glass houses and conservatories built, including what became known as the ‘Far Famed Dome Conservatory’, considered to be the largest of its kind in the world. Diana was a very domineering woman who fell out with almost everybody that she met, including her son Thomas Wentworth Beaumont who, on inheriting the estate, auctioned off everything that reminded him of his mother.