Savile Town Marina, Dewsbury, South Yorkshire

We woke to glorious weather and the promise of an excellent day. We headed off ten miles south to the Yorkshire Sculptural Park also known as the YSP, advertised in our tour guides to be a free attraction, and indeed it is if you arrive on foot or drop in by parachute. The Park gathers its revenue from the donations the generous drop into the collection box, and more reliably, their parking fees. The visitor can pay just £10 to stay for the whole day, or at least during opening times, or just £6 for one to two hours, or if they make a mini-visit as we did, in and out within the hour, just £3. Alas the park alone without the wonderful and numerous sculptures requires the visitor to hang about for more than an hour, which is not immediately clear on arrival.

We saw our visit as a filler as it was still too early to arrive at the National Trust property planned as the ultimate destination, and instead should have put aside more time to appreciate this wonderful Council owned property. 

The park’s collection of works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jonathan Borofsky and many more is set out over the lovely parkland of Bretton Hall. The park was opened in 1977 and was the United Kingdom’s first sculpture park based on the temporary open air exhibitions organised in London parks from the 1940s to 1970s by the Art Council and the London County Council.

Ninety hectares of Bretton Hall’s parkland is home to the Sculpture Park, and a further forty hectares to the Bretton Country Park. The Hall itself, originally designed and built around 1720, is currently undergoing massive restructure with the ultimate goal of providing hotel accommodation.

The park is incredibly popular, with busloads of tourists and students pouring in even on a Friday. There were students, armed with sketch books, who probably came from the Leeds’ university campus and those of more junior years showing incredible restraint compared to those creating havoc in the museum yesterday.

We were gone by the pumpkin hour of 11.26 am, and headed ten miles or so across to Nostell Priory which has not operated as any sort of religious establishment for a very long while. However it did start its life as an Augustine priory founded on the site in the early 12^th century dedicated to St Oswald, the name retained by the Baronets and Barons that have lived here in more modern times. 

The property covering one hundred and one hectares, ended up in the hands of the Winn family in 1654 after the Dissolution of the Monasteries after other various owners, where it has remained ever since or at least until the National Trust took custody of the house and immediate surrounding land in 1984 in lieu of inheritance tax. The house had been open to the public since the 1950s as a heritage site, although I wonder if it was then presented as well as it is today.

The house itself owes its existence to Sir Rowland Winn, 4^th Baronet, who inherited Nostell in 1722 at the tender age of sixteen. Inspired by his travels in Europe, he commissioned plans for the house from a local architect, James Moyser in 1727. It was designed in the Palladian style, as a statement of wealth and status, however it was not until nine years later that construction commenced under the direction of James Paine, who continued to work for the 4^th Baronet on and off for the next thirty years.

When Rowland Winn died in 1765, his son of the same name chose instead to have the up and coming Robert Adam continue on the interior of the house, carrying on for a further ten years. Working beside Adam was equally talented painter Antonio Zucchi, plasterer Josph Rose the Younger and cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, they who also worked on Harwood House and many other grand houses of the time. Tragically the 5^th Baronet was killed in a carriage accident and the building project was left incomplete and vast sums of money were left owing to the master craftsmen.

The property and title subsequently changed hands sideways over the years as they tend to do when the direct descendants fail to produce any or of the right gender, and it was not until the early 1800s that the house’s architecture once more featured in any significant story.

Charles Winn inherited the estate in 1817 and then on his death in 1874, his son Rowland, both commissioning further work on the furnishing and interiors at Nostell, much of it demolishing or covering up the fine designs of Robert Adam and his cohorts. By now the Winns had been awarded the title of Lord, involving themselves in politics and too busy to spent too much time in Nostell itself. Through the next century, there were two fires which offered opportunity for returning some of the rooms to their Rococo style, as they are presented today.

Today Charles Rowland Andrew Winn, 6^th Baron Saint Oswald, owns the land outside that owned by the Trust and has rights of access to stay in the house should he feel the urge. We were told that rarely happens but it was obviously part of the deal when the property was handed over to the National Trust.

Today the house is staffed by National Trust volunteers, mostly in their very senior years, many bent, frail and a little vague. Chris and I joked about the recent National Trust on line survey volunteers have been asked to complete, quizzing them on their attitudes and own bent toward gender and sexuality preferences, a survey that has stirred up a hornet’s nest if the media are to be believed. We wondered what these old souls would have thought about it all, knowing that some volunteers across the country have resigned on the strength of the matter, and then decided that they probably did not do email, and so would have been spared the indignity.

Today we spent some time walking about the lovely walled garden, some of it in formal rose gardens and the rest lush with dahlias, rhubarb and a wonderful variety of other flowers and vegetables. We took some time walking beside the wonderful lake and through the woods, then taking our time through two of the three floors of the house open to the public.

We also took time to enjoy the exhibition all about the famous clockmaker, John Harrison, who was born on the estate. It was he who ingeniously and doggedly solved one of the great scientific challenges of his age; the longitude problem. Here in the basement of Nostell is one of Harrison’s wooden clocks, three hundred years old this year and within a month of being stopped for all time, or repaired. It seems that the jury is still out as to what is to become of this clock.

By the time we emerged from the house, the sun had disappeared and the skies darkened with threatening rain, this arriving before we managed to make our way through the heavy traffic of Wakefield and Dewsbury.