The Dukeries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Dukeries was a district in the county of Nottinghamshire south of the town of Worksop, which was so called because it used to contain five ducal residences in proximity to one another. These included:
- Clumber House: principal seat of the Dukes of Newcastle
- Thoresby Hall: principal seat of the Dukes of Kingston and later of the Earls Manvers of the same family.
- Welbeck Abbey: principal seat of the Dukes of Portland
- Worksop Manor: a seat of the Dukes of Norfolk
The Dukes of Leeds also had a seat here at one time. The Dukeries was remarkable not only for the number of ducal families in proximity to each other, there being at most times fewer than one English ducal family for each two English counties, but also because the parks of the various houses were largely contiguous, rather than being separated from one another by miles of farmland, as is usually the case with the parks of major country houses in England, whether ducal or not.
None of the houses remain in private occupation. The incumbent Duke of Norfolk sold Worksop Manor to the Duke of Newcastle in the 1839. The Norfolks preferred to spend more time at Arundel Castle and the Duke of Newcastle only wanted the land to enlarge his estate, so he had the house demolished. The Dukes of Leeds had sold their property here by the late nineteenth century. Clumber Park was demolished by the Dukes of Newcastle in the 1930s because they could no longer afford to live there. Welbeck Abbey is the British Army's Sixth Form College, but the descendants of the last Duke of Portland still live in a more modest, post-World War II country house called Welbeck Woodhouse on their estate in the Dukeries. Thoresby Hall opened as a country house hotel early in the 21st century after a long period of neglect.
The term "The Dukeries" is still sometimes used, and it appears on some modern maps, including the one linked below.
[edit] External link
- Aerial photo/map from multimap.com - Welbeck Abbey is in the bottom left quadrant near the largest lake; Worksop Manor was between it and the town of Worksop; Clumber Park is on the bank of the second largest lake and may be seen by zooming in; Thoresby is labelled bottom right.
