castle in an English landscape garden. For its central court where the four original towers were named for his four children, the earl commissioned his portrait statue in 1730 from Michael Rysbrack, whom James Gibbs had been the first to employ when he came to England; the statue has been moved closer to the house. A staunch Tory, Lord Strafford remained in political obscurity during Walpole's Whig supremacy, for the remainder of his life. An obelisk was erected to the memory of Queen Anne in 1734, and a sitting room in the house was named "Queen Anne's Sitting Room" until modern times. Other landscape features were added, one after the other, with the result that today there are twenty-six listed structures in what remains of the parkland. Second earl at Wentworth Castle The first earl died in 1739 and his son succeeded him. William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford (1722-1791) rates an entry in Colvin's Biographical Dictionary of British Architects as the designer of the fine neo-Palladian range, built in 1759–64 (illustration, upper right). He married a daughter of the Duke of Argyll and spent a year on the Grand Tour to improve his taste; he eschewed political life. At Wentworth Castle he had John Platt (1728–1810) on the site as master mason and Charles Ross ( –1770/75) to draft the final drawings and act as "superintendent"; Ross was a carpenter and joiner of London who had worked under the Palladian architect and practised architectural amanuensis, Matthew Brettingham, at Strafford's London house, 5, St James's Square, in 1748–49. Ross's proven competency in London in London doubtless recommended him to the Earl for the building campaign in Yorkshire. At Wentworth Castle it was generally understood, as Lord Verulam remarked in 1768, "'Lord Strafford himself is his own architect and contriver in everything." Even in the London house, Walpole tells us, "he chose all the ornaments himself". Horace Walpole singled out Wentworth Castle as a paragon for the perfect integration of the site, the landscape, even the harmony of the stone: "If a model is sought of the most perfect taste in architecture, where grace softens dignity, and lightness attempers magnificence... where the position is the most happy, and even the colour of the stone the most harmonious; the virtuoso should be directed to the new front of Wentworth-castle: the result of the same judgement that had before distributed so many beauties