over that domain and called from wood, water, hills, prospects, and buildings, a compendium of picturesque nature, improved by the chastity of art." Later history With the extinction of the earldom following the death of third earl in 1799, the huge family estates were divided into three, one-third going to the descendants of each daughter of the 1st Earl. Wentworth Castle was left in trust for Lady Henrietta Vernon's grandson Frederick Vernon, (of Hilton Hall, Staffordshire) whose trustees were William, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, and Walter Spencer Stanhope. Frederick Vernon added Wentworth to his surname and took charge of the estate in 1816. Between 1820 and 1840, the old chapel of St. James was replaced with the current building and the windows of the Baroque Wing were lowered on either side of the entrance hall. Frederick Vernon Wentworth also amalgamated two ground floor rooms to make what is now the blue room. In July 1838, a freak hailstorm badly damaged the cupola and windows of the house as well as all the greenhouses within the walled gardens, yet this pales into insignificance when compared with the nearby Huskar Colliery disaster where 26 child miners lost their lives due to flooding following the hailstorm. In May 1853, a freak snowstorm also caused severe damage, particularly to the mature trees within the gardens, some of them rare species from America planted by the first and second earls. Frederick Vernon Wentworth was succeeded by his son Thomas in 1885 who added the iron framed Conservatory and electric lighting by March of the following year. The Victorian Wing also dates from this decade and its construction allowed the Vernon-Wentworths to entertain the young Duke of Clarence and his entourage during the winters of 1887 and 1889. The estate was inherited by Thomas' eldest son, Captain Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, MP for Brighton, in 1902. Preferring his Suffolk estates, the Captain put the most valuable of his Wentworth Castle house contents up for sale at auction with Christie's after the First World War. The paintings sold at Christie's on 13 November 1919. Bruce Vernon-Wentworth, who had no direct heirs, sold the house and its gardens to Barnsley Corporation in 1948, while the rest of his estates, in Yorkshire, Suffolk and Scotland were left to a distant cousin. The remaining contents of Wentworth Castle were emptied at a house sale, and the house became a teacher training college, the