Britain November/December 2023 - Sample Issue

DOWN DALE UP HILL &

We take a tour with a local expert to discover the highlights of the Yorkshire Dales, from sleepy villages to historic castles, in one day

WORDS NATASHA FOGES

wonderlandsWINTER

Britain’s cold winters were a time of hardship in ages past, but our resourceful forebears found ways to make the best of the icy conditions

A HOUSE THROUGH TIME

Wentworth Woodhouse was once one of the finest houses in the land, visited by royalty – until a fateful decision changed everything

WORDS ELEANOR DOUGHTY

Previous page: Wentworth Woodhouse is one of the largest houses in private ownership in Britain

This page, left to right: A portrait of William Wentworth, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, 1785; the grand Marble Hall

There once was a house that stood in its own land, with follies and bearpits and Old Masters. Its exceedingly wealthy owners had everything that life could offer them. Their house was, if not the biggest, then perhaps the second biggest in the land, its walls filled with paintings deserving of a place in the National Gallery.

This house, Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, is still there. It’s likely the biggest stately home you’ve never heard of. But its family, the Fitzwilliams, once one of the grandest in Britain, have been forgotten by history, and are no longer in residence at South Yorkshire’s forgotten palace.

Their former home really is spectacular. Two houses built back to back, Wentworth Woodhouse is the result of a family feud. When William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford died in 1695, he left his Wentworth estate to his nephew Thomas Watson-Wentworth, while his junior title Lord Raby was inherited by Thomas Wentworth, his first cousin once removed. Raby, denied what he felt was his birthright, set about trying to outdo Watson-Wentworth, buying Stainborough Hall just a few miles north, which he renamed Wentworth Castle, and land around Wentworth itself to provoke a turf war.

After Thomas Watson-Wentworth died, his son, also called Thomas and later created 1st Marquess of Rockingham, became Raby’s new rival. In 1725, he began building a west-facing Baroque mansion at Wentworth. A Whig, he hoped to impress his political allies with his new house –and to trump his rival with its magnificence – but by the time it was finished Baroque was out, and Palladian was in.

Wentworth Woodhouse is likely the biggest stately home you’ve never heard of. Its family, the Fitwilliams, have been forgotten by history

LITTLE BRITAIN

A BOLTHOLE FOR BOBBIES

In our series celebrating small wonders of Britain, we visit a historical gem in London’s Trafalgar Square

The first-time visitor to Trafalgar Square can be overwhelmed by all there is to see. The centrepiece, Nelson’s Column, a soaring Corinthian column of granite, is crowned with a bronze capital and a 17ft statue of Admiral Lord Nelson. Around the base are the four famous bronze lions couchant, designed by Sir Edwin Landseer. Fountains play in lobed quatrefoil basins. A cloaked George IV sits like a Roman Emperor astride his horse. The National Gallery, with its grand Corinthian portico and stone cupolaed dome, commands the north side of the square, while around it the London traffic constantly churns – so it is little wonder if wide-eyed tourists and Londoners in a hurry fail to notice an anomalous little structure in the square’s south-east corner.

Circular, and ringed with slit windows, it is topped with a lamp, and has a step up to a glazed door – but what is its purpose? It is often said to be Britain’s smallest police station, and, at a pinch, it could accommodate two detainees, but its true purpose was that of a police observation box, created in 1926, within an ornamental granite light column, so that a solo officer could keep an eye on the more disputatious elements that are historically drawn to this popular rallying place. It was equipped with a telephone, with a direct line to Scotland Yard, and when the receiver was lifted, the lamp on the top would flash, alerting brother officers nearby to possible trouble.

This more permanent fixture replaced a wooden telephone box sited next to the Tube station and known as a ‘silence cabinet’. It was created at the request of the police, in the face of public opposition. The government hummed and hawed over the cost, but

eventually Sir John Anderson (who gave his name to Second World War air-raid shelters), Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, nodded through the £550 needed to convert one of the square’s existing lamp columns.

Another legend, that that light, installed in 1826, was from Nelson’s HMS Victory, is also fanciful. In fact, this is a ‘Bude light’, of the sort designed by Sir Goldsworthy Gurney at his home in Bude, Cornwall, in the 1830s, principally to light the Houses of Parliament. It is one of four octagonal gas lanterns installed on the square, long since converted to electricity.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, dark blue police boxes like Dr Who’s time-travelling Tardis, and sky-blue police telephone posts, were familiar sights across London and an important tool for the police, hard as that is to imagine in our connected world. The boxes, designed by Gilbert Mackenzie Tench in 1929, were indeed miniature police stations, in which a ‘bobby’ could fill in reports, eat a lunchtime sandwich, or hold a miscreant. By 1953 there were 685 police boxes and 72 posts, also to Tench’s design, on the streets of Greater London. However, unlike the Tardis, they had no facility for time travel, and fell out of use with the advent of radio communications.

As they became obsolete the kiosks and pillars were removed or sold off, but eight decommissioned cast-iron police pillars, Grade II listed, can still be seen around London, from the Victoria Embankment to Aldgate in the City.

As for ‘Britain’s smallest police station’, it is still in use, if somewhat ignominiously, as broom storage for street cleaners for the City of Westminster.