South Yorkshire teens artwork displayed in historic Wentworth Woodhouse

Now the Rotherham stately home has a new set of original artworks to display with pride, after teenagers from across the region spent a week at the mansion recently, creating a unique series of images.

The art, created by South Yorkshire teenagers on the National Citizen Service scheme, run by Rotherham United’s Community Sports Trust, will be displayed on the mansion’s rooftop, where hundreds of visitors a week are enjoying guided tours.

Wentworth Woodhouse is being restored by its Preservation Trust and vital repairs to the roof, which is the size of six football pitches, have begun. Over 700 tonnes of scaffolding over the east front of the house enables heritage construction specialists to work on the roof for the next 18 months, and a huge canopy now protects the house. Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust’s rooftop tours, launched in July, take visitors 18 metres up, via 135 steps or a lift for those with mobility issues, for a bird’s eye view of the house and countryside. Over a dozen imaginative images created by NCS young people will now adorn the hoardings on the public walkways.

Keeley Stephenson, of Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, said: “We asked them to think creatively, using the house and a host of facts about the scaffolding and the rooftop tours as their inspiration and we were astonished at how brilliant their paintings were. They are going to look fantastic on our rooftop walkways. We even got a new version of Whistlejacket, the Earl’s legendary 18th century racehorse, whose painting by Stubbs is in the National Portrait Gallery.”

Equally impressed was Woodhead Group quantity surveyor Amy Stamford, who is working on the roof project and encouraged her bosses to provide all art materials for the project, and Rotherham United’s Community Sports Trust, who decided to pay to have their logo on one of the paintings.