Welbeck Abbey

Welbeck Abbey, the seat of the Duke of Portland, in Nottinghamshire, 3 miles S. of Worksop. Occupying the site of an old Premonstratensian abbey, it came from 'Bess of Hardwick' to her son Sir Charles Cavendish, the father of the first Duke of Newcastle, whose far-away heiress married in 1734 the second Duke of Portland. It stands in a park 10 miles in circumference, and is a stately Palladian edifice of mainly the 17th and 18th centuries, but was greatly enlarged about 1864 by the fifth duke, to whom it owes its semi-underground picture-gallery, ball-room, and riding-school, the last 385 feet long, 104 feet wide, and 51 feet high.