A Rich Heritage

 

500 acres of fields, hills, woodland, lakes and formal gardens combine to create a beautiful landscape and stunning setting for Yorkshire Sculpture Park. 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.

The main families that lived on the Bretton Estate, and made it what it is, were the de Brettons (until 1261), the Dronsfields (1261 - 1407), the Wentworths (1407 - 1792) and the Beaumonts (1792 - 1948).

Over this time many buildings have been built on site and many taken down. The landscape have been carefully designed and meticulously managed to look 'natural'. Many of the top architects of their days 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.

In 1948 Wentworth Henry Canning Beaumont sold much of the estate to West Riding County Council and a year later the mansion became a training college for teachers of art, music and drama, which later became part of the University of Leeds.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park was established in 1977 by current Executive Director Peter Murray OBE who was leading a post graduate course in art education at Bretton Hall College. This is the start of the YSP story. This story is ongoing as YSP grows and develops. By visiting YSP you become part of that story.

You can find out more about the history of the site by joining a Heritage Landscape Tour, led by a Heritage Volunteer most Saturdays and Sundays. E-mail oliver.brown@ysp.co.uk or call 01924 832541 for more details about the tours or about volunteering at YSP.

Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has provided a grant to enable further research into the history of the Bretton Estate and the development of Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Part of this project will see the delivery of a heritage archive which will complement the main YSP archive, sited above the formal Bothy Gardens and easily reachable from the Visitor Centre. The ‘heritage’ of the Bretton Estate has been variously interpreted to include existing documentation on: landscape and planting records; wildlife; historical and architectural features; social histories and families of the Bretton Estate; and historical maps. The heritage archive will be accessible from June 2010. Please contact the Curator, Angie de Courcy Bower, with any enquiries and to book appointments:

e: archive@ysp.co.uk
t: 01924 832537

When the Bretton Estate was sold by the second Viscount Allendale in 1948 a considerable amount of the existing historic documentation was distributed to other archives in the region. In 2007 when Bretton Hall College was closed (under the ownership of University of Leeds) there was a second phase of distribution. The central archives which continue to house this documentation are:

Yorkshire Archaelogical Society (YAS)
23 Clarendon Road
Leeds LS2 9NZ

www.yas.org.uk
t: 0113 245 7922

Includes: sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth-century grants, conveyances and land leases relating to Bretton Estate; pardon from the King Henry VII to Thomas Wentworth of West Bretton (1485-6); lectures from Sir Herbert Read, first honorary Fellow of Bretton Hall College (1953, 1960, 1961); twentieth-century plans and maps.

Special Collections, University Library, University of Leeds
Leeds University Library
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds LS2 9JT

e: specialcollections@library.leeds.ac.uk
t: 0113 34 35518 or 0113 34 36383

Includes: Bretton Hall & Dearne Valley Collection; education material from Bretton Hall College; Head Gardener’s diary (1963-1985); twentieth-century plans and maps.

Please contact the archives directly should you wish to pursue further research into the heritage of the Bretton Estate. Meanwhile if you would like additional information on the current HLF research conducted into the Bretton Estate, including information on the development of the heritage archive, please contact researcher Saskia Warren at: saskia.warren@shef.ac.uk