Another of the imposing houses of the eighteenth century is Wentworth Woodhouse, in Yorkshire, a seat of the Earl Fitzwilliam, which must not be confused with Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley, a smaller house, but still a fine one, built by Thomas, Earl of Strafford, in 1730. Wentworth Woodhouse was designed in the year 1740 by Henry Flitcroft for Thomas, Earl of Malton, who succeeded some six years later to the barony of Rockingham, and was thereupon created Marquis of Rockingham. His biographer[72] says that he “rebuilt the ancient family seat, now called Wentworth House, in a very elegant manner, where he died on 14th December 1750.” His eldest daughter, Anne, married Earl Fitzwilliam, and carried Wentworth House into her husband’s family in 1769. Flitcroft published a drawing of the principal front of the house at the end of the 1770 edition of Kent’s “Designs of Inigo Jones,” and in the main this design was carried out. The central and chief part of the façade was executed as drawn, but the two wings, while preserving their original disposition, were considerably improved. [Illustration: FIG. 175.--Houghton. The Marble Dining-Room.] [Illustration: FIG. 176.--HOUGHTON. THE GREEN STATE ROOM.] [Illustration: FIG. 177.--Houghton. Sir Robert Walpole’s Dressing-Room.] [Illustration: FIG. 178.--HOUGHTON. THE UPPER PART OF STAIRCASE.] The stately front (Fig. 179) is some 600 ft. in extent, and is the more striking in that it is a continuous façade, and not broken up into the usual three parts, consisting of the house and two outlying wings. The memory of the old curved colonnades is preserved in the convex portions which connect the end towers with the front. The central block is not so much an adaptation as a copy of Campbell’s second design for Wanstead (“Vit. Brit.,” i. 24, 25), with the omission of the cupola and of one window in the length of the wings. It is rendered personal to the builder by the introduction of his arms in the pediment, and the Wentworth motto, “Mea gloria fides,” in the frieze. To whatever extent Flitcroft may have borrowed his materials, it cannot be denied that he has blended them together with noble results. In the interior there is a fine saloon (Fig. 180), which recalls Campbell’s stone hall at Houghton. Its variety of treatment is in strong contrast to the cold-looking hall which contains the staircase (Fig. 181). Both these apartments have the defect of their qualities. There is so much architecture that there is scarcely room for those homely touches which endear a house to its occupants. The architect is more in evidence than the family. The splendour which stimulates the admiration of the stranger palls upon the eye that sees it daily; the feelings cease to answer to the stimulus. Grand rooms like these seem to demand an impossible series of grand functions, or at the least that old-fashioned custom of keeping open house which once prevailed at Wentworth Woodhouse.