Chesterfield Market Festival

Today I visited Chesterfield's Market Festival - it was the regular Flea Market but with a 1940s theme

Chesterfield's Town Crier welcomed us to the festivities

The Home Guard were on parade

The friendly ARP Warden was looking after the wash-day products

Was he telling a 1940s joke?

Washing 1940s style

For details of this Living History group see link UK Home Front

There was also entertainment - George Formby (lookalike) and songs ...

... and some local dancers

There were also some vintage cars on display

For more details of the Market Festival see link Chesterfield Market Festival - well worth a visit

Wentworth Castle

Today we visited Wentworth Castle and Gardens. It is a grade I listed country house, the former seat of the Earls of Strafford, at Stainborough, near Barnsley.

In 1695, Thomas Wentworth expected to inherit the landed estate and vast wealth at Wentworth Woodhouse, some 7 miles to the south of Stainborough, when the 2nd Earl of Strafford died childless in 1695.  Unexpectedly, however, the estate was left to Thomas Wentworth’s cousin Thomas Watson.
 

Although Thomas Wentworth went on to command high positions as a soldier and diplomat in the service of King William III and Queen Anne, he remained determined to re-establish his claim to the title of Earl Strafford – but to have any chance of achieving this he required a large landed estate. An opportunity arose in 1708 to purchase what was then known as Stainborough Hall and Thomas seized his chance to create an estate suitable for a man of his importance.  Queen Anne duly re-created the Earldom of Strafford and Thomas became the first Earl Strafford of the second creation.

  
The Estate has been in the care of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust since 2001 and is open to the public year round 7 days a week. The castle's gardens were restored in the early 21st century, and are also open to visitors.

Dahlias in the John Arnold Garden - he was the first Head Gardener - in the 18th century

The Victorian Flower Garden

The Sun Monument was erected by William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, and later dedicated to the achievements of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, a renowned author, traveller and eccentric. It was the first landscape monument to pay homage to a living woman who was neither a monarch nor a goddess.

Remains of Stainborough Castle - a mock Motte and Bailey Castle constructed in 1720s

Then back through the Stumpery

The Rotunda was started in 1739, the year of Thomas Wentworth’s death and completed by his son William Wentworth in 1742. It is a round Ionic temple. Its plan is based on the temple of Vesta at Tivoli, near Rome and originally it stood clear of trees on a grassy hill.

For further details see Wentworth Castle

Burton Agnes Hall

During our recent visit to the East Riding of Yorkshire, we called in to Burton Agnes Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Burton Agnes, near Driffield. It was built by Sir Henry Griffith in 1601–10

There is an older Norman Manor House, originally built in 1173 on an adjacent site; both buildings are now Grade I listed buildings

 

 This is an old dog kennel

The estate has been in the hands of the same family since Roger de Stuteville first built a manor house on the site in 1173. In 1457 Sir Walter Griffith came to live there. The Griffiths were a Welsh family who had emigrated to Staffordshire in the thirteenth century and inherited the Burton Agnes estate.

In 1989 the property was left to a distant cousin, Simon Cunliffe-Lister, then aged twelve, grandson of Viscount Whitelaw and son of the 3rd Earl of Swinton.

Today, the estate is owned by the Burton Agnes Preservation Trust and is managed by Cunliffe-Lister and his mother, Hon Susan Whitelaw.

 

The gardens boast 3,000 plant species and include the National Collection of Campanulas

The walled flower garden has a games motif with a central chess board played on black and white paving stones. Other games include draughts, snakes and ladders and hoop toss. Each of these games is in a separate garden surrounded by plants selected by flower colours

The walled garden also had many, many butterflies

This bird house is at the centre of the maze - I took several wrong turns before reaching the centre!

We came across this pair on the Woodland walk.

For more details of this Hall see Burton Agnes Hall

For any readers who are steam engine enthusiasts, a Hall Class railway engine was named Burton Agnes Hall, and is preserved at Didcot Railway Centre