Wortley Hall
Encyclopedia
Stately home
A stately home is a "great country house". It is thus a palatial great house or in some cases an updated castle, located in the British Isles, mostly built between the mid-16th century and the early part of the 20th century, as well as converted abbeys and other church property...
in the small South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...
village of Wortley
Wortley, South Yorkshire
Wortley is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. At the 2001 census it had a population of 579.Wortley grew up as a settlement where the Sheffield to Halifax road crossed the Cheshire to Rotherham route...
, located west of Barnsley
Barnsley
Barnsley is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Dearne, north of the city of Sheffield, south of Leeds and west of Doncaster. Barnsley is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley, of which Barnsley is the largest and...
. For more than five decades the hall has been chiefly associated with the British Labour movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
. It is currently used by several trades unions
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
and other organisations as a venue for residential training courses and other meetings, as well as for purely social gatherings.
The hall is also a licensed venue for wedding
Wedding
A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes...
and civil partnership ceremonies, and is open to day visitors who wish to explore its formal gardens and extensive grounds.
Brief history
Wortley Hall was built in the 18th century and was the seat of the WharncliffeEarl of Wharncliffe
Earl of Wharncliffe, in the West Riding of the County of York, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1876 for Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 3rd Baron Wharncliffe. He was a descendant of Edward Wortley Montagu and his wife, the authoress Lady Mary Wortley...
family until the Second World War. During the war the hall was used by the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, but after 1945 its structural condition deteriorated.
In 1950, a group of local trade union activists identified the hall as a possible educational and holiday centre, and established a co-operative which succeeded in purchasing the hall for those purposes. It was formally opened on 5 May 1951.