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Campaign group bought Britain's largest house for 10.3 mln USD

Xinhua, February 4, 2016 Adjust font size:

A campaign group has bought the largest private home in Britain for 10.3 million U.S. dollars.

The sale comes weeks after Hong Kong-based Lake House Group pulled out at the last minute from an 11.7 million U.S. dollars deal to buy the estate.

The Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust now plans a 62 million U.S. dollars restoration project to transform Wentworth Woodhouse near the Yorkshire city of Sheffield into a major tourist attraction. The house is said to have inspired one of the novels by the famous British author Jane Austen.

Spanning a vast estate of Yorkshire countryside, the grand stately home was built in the early 1700s and boasts one of the finest frontages in Britain. Behind the ornate facade, there are five miles of corridors leading to many rooms.

The preservation trust, set up with the help of the heritage campaign group SAVE, announced an agreement has been reached with the owners of the property, the Newbold family, for the sale of the house and the estate.

The purchase price of 7 million pounds(10.3 million U.S. dollars) includes a 5.25 million U.S. dollars grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and grants from various trusts and charities, including the John Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust.

The property is acknowledged as the largest private house in Britain, and its frontage the longest in Europe. The house has 23,000 square meters of floorspace, and is said to have 365 rooms, one for every day of the year. It is surrounded by a 73 hectare park and an estate of 6,100 hectares.

It was once the home of Charles Watson-Wentworth, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, who became the eighth prime minister of Britain in the 1780s when King George III was on the throne.

The last owner of the house, London architect Clifford Newbold, bought it a few years ago, planning a restoration program, but he died last year, and the house was put up for sale.

The house has been used in the filming of a number of period dramas.

SAVE Britain's executive president Marcus Binney said: "Our plans will open the house to the general public and bring back all the listed buildings into regular use, for events of many kinds. It will become a major new attraction to the 1.7 million people living in the Sheffield Region, providing jobs and access to the extensive gardens and the mansion house." Endit