Company puts Wentworth Woodhouse’s unsung heroes in the spotlight for BBC series and donates £2,000

Nottingham-based Robin Hood Media decided to donate £2,000 to the Rotherham stately home’s Big House Heroes fundraising campaign after spending six months on-site producing a documentary for the BBC1 series, Our Lives.

The 30-minute episode airs on September 10 and is already available on iPlayer.

It explores how the Preservation Trust, which took on the huge Grade I listed site in 2017, is restoring its former glory and transforming it into a major community asset and tourist attraction.

Freelance producer and cameraman Tom Whitaker, from Leeds, was commissioned by TV production company Robin Hood Media to follow the work of volunteers and staff at Wentworth Woodhouse.

The Trust now has 105 staff and 350 volunteers and Rob’s film tells the story through the eyes of five of them.

Kimberworth husband and wife David and Rosemary Johnson, aka Brasso Dave and Classy Scrubber, and buggy driver Brian Ware, a former miner from Swinton ‘star’ alongside the Trust’s assistant gardener Helen Kelly, who lives in Wentworth and grew up in Hoyland, and gardening apprentice Liam Coleman.

Robin Hood Media produces the BBC’s Politics East Midlands programme and was founded 10 years ago by Rob Pittam, a former BBC business correspondent and presenter on the BBC2 show Working Lunch.

The Our Lives documentary series on Wentworth Woodhouse is its first commission for a documentary on network TV.

Rob said: “Our Lives celebrates ordinary people around the UK doing extraordinary things for their communities.

“I’d read Black Diamonds, Catherine Bailey’s best-selling book about Wentworth Woodhouse’s fortunes, and knew it was the perfect place to feature.

“My dad was a miner and I was brought up in Ollerton, a pit village in Nottinghamshire, so I understand the strong pride mining people have for where they live.

We fell in love with the place and are now fully behind what the Trust is doing for Wentworth Woodhouse.

“Having got to know many of its unsung superheroes, we thought it only fitting to step up and support the Big House Heroes Campaign with a donation.

“We hope to make further donations to the house in the future as our company grows.”

Big House Heroes launched in April and is enlisting ‘heroes’ who will each pledge to raise £1,000.

The money will be used to support the Trust’s educational projects, community activities and wellbeing programmes for local people, buy equipment for staff teams and the daily costs of running the house.

Carole Foster, the Preservation Trust’s Fundraising Manager, said: “Rob is definitely a Big House Hero. We are very grateful for his generous donation, and the fact that his production company is putting Wentworth Woodhouse and our devoted staff and volunteers in the spotlight. We hope everyone switches on to watch.”

• For more information on the Big House Heroes campaign, go to https://wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk/big-house-heroes/