The English Baroque, brick-built, western range of Wentworth Woodhouse was begun in 1725 by Thomas Watson-Wentworth, (after 1728 Lord Malton) after he inherited it from his father in 1723.

[9] It replaced the Jacobean structure that was once the home of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, whom Charles I sacrificed in 1641 to appease Parliament.

Tunnicliffe was pleased enough with this culmination of his provincial practice to issue an engraving signed "R. Tunniclif, architectus"[12] which must date before 1734, as it is dedicated to Baron Malton, Watson-Wentworth's earlier title.

"[13] In the 20th century, Nikolaus Pevsner would agree,[14] but the mention of the architect-earl Burlington, arbiter of architectural taste, boded ill for the provincial surveyor-builder, Tunnicliffe.

Flitcroft, right-hand man of the architectural dilettanti and fully occupied as well at the Royal Board of Works, could not constantly be on-site, however: Francis Bickerton, surveyor and builder of York, paid bills in 1738 and 1743.

The second Marquess envisaged a sculpture gallery at the house, which never came to fruition; four marbles by Joseph Nollekens were carried out to his commission, in expectation of the gallery; the Diana, signed and dated 1778, is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Juno, Venus and Minerva, grouped with a Roman antique marble of Paris, are at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

King George V and Queen Mary visited south Yorkshire from 8 to 12 July 1912 and stayed at Wentworth Woodhouse for four days.

In the end, Lady Mabel Fitzwilliam, sister of the 7th Earl and a local alderman, brokered a deal whereby the West Riding County Council leased most of the house for an educational establishment, leaving forty rooms as a family apartment.

Five separate blocks of modern student accommodation (Stubbs, Brameld, Repton, Flitcroft and Rockingham) were built in the grounds of the deer park.

The house was bought by locally born businessman Wensley Grosvenor Haydon-Baillie, who started a programme of restoration, but a business failure saw it repossessed by a Swiss bank and put back on the market in 1998.

[35] In February 2016, it was sold to the Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust (WWPT) for £7 million after a potential sale to the Hong Kong-based Lake House Group fell through.

[40][35] Welcoming the grant, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed a widely circulated meme claiming that his family benefited from it.

[42] In April 1946, on the orders of Manny Shinwell (the then Labour Party's Minister of Fuel and Power), a "column of lorries and heavy plant machinery" arrived at Wentworth.

[43] Ostensibly the coal was desperately needed in Britain's austere post-war economy to fuel the railways, but the decision has been widely seen as useful cover for an act of class-war spite against the coal-owning aristocracy.

A survey by Sheffield University, commissioned by the 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, found the coal to be "very poor stuff" and "not worth the getting"; this contrasted with Shinwell's assertion that it was "exceptionally good-quality.

What followed saw the mining of 99 acres (40 ha) of lawns and woods, the renowned formal gardens and the show-piece pink shale driveway (a by-product of the family's collieries).

Ancient trees were uprooted and the debris of earth and rubble was piled 50 ft (15 m) high in front of the family's living quarters.

The Yorkshire branch later threatened a strike over the Labour government's plans for Wentworth, and Joe Hall wrote personally to Clement Attlee in a futile attempt to stop the mining.

The current owners of the property allege that mining operations near the house caused substantial structural damage to the building due to subsidence,[46] and lodged a claim in 2012 of £100 million for remedial works against the Coal Authority.

[48] Two sets of death duties in the 1940s, and the nationalisation of the Fitzwilliam coal mines, greatly reduced the wealth of the family, and most of the contents of the house were dispersed in auction sales in 1948, 1986, and 1998.

The original house, now the west front, with the garden range facing northwest towards the village, was built of brick with stone details.