Worksop Manor

Worksop Manor stands in Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, on land once part of the Dukeries, a group of four grand estates. The present house forms a single wing of a vast quadrangle built in ashlar stone with slate roofs. It survives from a project begun in the 1580s for George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, probably designed by Robert Smythson. The estate began as a medieval deer park recorded from about 1161, and a hunting lodge was added in the 1530s. A priory founded nearby in the 1120s by William de Lovetot still has its impressive gatehouse.

The house was once one of England’s largest Elizabethan prodigy houses, with about five hundred rooms set in a park of more than two thousand three hundred acres. Mary, Queen of Scots was held there in 1580 under the earl’s care. After the Stuarts came to the throne, James I and Anne of Denmark stayed at Worksop, where the queen wrote a letter in German to her brother. The estate later passed to the Howard family, Dukes of Norfolk, who enlarged the house and laid out formal gardens with ironwork by Jean Tijou.

Visitors today see the stable block, service wing and part of the eastern range remodelled into the present manor. The surrounding park still contains the Worksop Manor Stud, a thoroughbred breeding establishment operating since at least 1890. Ancient records show the Lords of Worksop hold their land by grand serjeanty, presenting a glove to the sovereign at coronations. The surviving buildings stand within a landscape shaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1750s.