50- Wentworth part 1.

As I don’t have the full year that I would have liked, (I know I procrastinated too much), we decided that I would have to look close to home for a number of places to visit. Indeed it surprising how many places there are near home which while I may have heard of, I have never actually been too.

So on Sunday 5^th July, Lou, I, Shea and our grandson William, set out in the car and headed North... not sure where we would end up. Well we didn’t have to go too far.

Our first stop was a village called Wentworth.

Wentworth is a small village just north of Sheffield, between Rotherham and Barnsley. It just off junction 35a of the M1, and approximately 11 miles or 26 minutes from where we live.

Wentworth is thought to have taken it;s name from an early Anglo-Saxon settler, possibly the person who first carved a clearing out of the woods.

In 1086 the village and the surrounding area were part of Roger de Busli estate and incldued in the Manor of Wath. The Domesday Book records that the King had retained three other estates as well as Wentworth.

Wentowrth is a real treasure, and although I had heard the name of it before, and possibly had family living there, it somewhere that I had never visited.

The village itself dates back to at least 1066, and its history and some of its buildings are inextricably linked with the history of the great aristocratic families of England and the UK, such as the Wentworths, the Watsons and the Fitzwilliams.

We didn’t actually manage to get to Wentworth Woodhouse or sadly to Wentworth Castle but they are places we may visit at a later date.

Much to William’s joy and Shea’s surprise, when we got to the car park, we saw a couple of horse drawn carriages, which seem to set the scene for the day.

We followed the horse and carriages out of the car park and turned left and walked towards the Church, we passed a row of wonderful cottages on the right hand side of the road.








And on the left we saw the most wonderful enclosed gardens. The houses at the side were all lived in by local villages, who keep the gardens themselves.

There's more, sooooooo please read part two!