55-555: The Elsecar Ironworks opened in 1795 in the village of Elsecar near Barnsley , South Yorkshire . The company was bankrupted in 1827 and taken over by the Wentworth estate who owned the land it stood on. The buildings are now part of the Elsecar Heritage Centre . Elsecar has been a mainly agricultural village situated on the Wentworth estate of Earl Fitzwilliam . There had been localised coal and iron mining on
110-460: A boating jetty to the reservoir, a pavilion cafe and bandstands. The village flourished as 'the seaside resort at the heart of the Yorkshire coalfield'. Since 2008, the name Elsecar-by-the-Sea has been used for the village gala, which takes place in the park each September. In March 2017 Elsecar was designated as one of ten Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) by Historic England with the benefit that
165-459: A century before, when it had been just a handful of cottages around a village green and a scattering of shallow coal pits, in a valley alongside an ancient stream. Elsecar's development from the late 18th century can be seen as a microcosm of the whole Industrial Revolution in Britain. The village was nothing more than a series of farms until the 18th century. Although coal had been mined in
220-464: A plain background. The canvas is large, lacks any other content except some discreet shadows, and Stubbs has paid precise attention to the details of the horse's appearance. It has been described in The Independent as "a paradigm of the flawless beauty of an Arabian thoroughbred". The Fitzwilliam family , heirs of the childless Rockingham, retained the painting until 1997 when funding from
275-427: A similar honey beige background broken only by small shadows at the feet. It would seem likely that leaving the portraits without the usual landscape background was Rockingham's idea. Stubbs depicts Whistlejacket rising to a levade , but with his head turned towards the viewer, in a pose comparable to a number of earlier monumental equestrian portraits , including examples by Rubens and Velázquez , but in these
330-551: A similarly sized equestrian portrait of George II by David Morier , but Rockingham then changed his mind. According to Horace Walpole, on a visit to Wentworth where he was probably shown round by the housekeeper, the painting was intended as a gift for the King, but Rockingham supposedly had not bothered to support progress of the painting after falling out of favour, and ordered it hung at Wentworth Woodhouse uncompleted instead. Another reason popularly given for it being "unfinished"
385-416: A single horse should command a huge canvas that legends quickly developed" explaining why the painting was unfinished, none of which seem plausible or supported by the evidence to modern art historians. In fact Stubbs's earliest canvases on his visit in 1762 included a pair of much smaller paintings of groups of standing horses, one including Whistlejacket, in a horizontal format "like a classical frieze" with
440-660: A station within the centre along part of the South Yorkshire Railway's Elsecar branch, towards Cortonwood. Some of the buildings, which were the National Coal Board workshops still stand and contain ironwork made in Elsecar. 53°29′40″N 1°25′12″W / 53.49444°N 1.42000°W / 53.49444; -1.42000 Elsecar Elsecar ( / ˈ ɛ l s ɪ k ɑːr / , locally / ˈ ɛ l s ɪ k ər / )
495-453: A story in the biography of Stubbs by his friend and fellow-painter Ozias Humphrey , when the portrait was nearly finished Whistlejacket was accidentally led in front of it by a stable boy and reacted violently, treating it as a rival stallion, and lifting the boy holding him fully off the ground in his attempts to attack the painting. The story probably originated with Stubbs himself, but is probably too good to be true; it clearly recalls Pliny
550-635: Is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire , England. It is near to Jump and Wentworth , it is also 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Hoyland , 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Barnsley and 8 miles (13 km) north-east of Sheffield . Elsecar falls within the Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Ward of Hoyland Milton. Elsecar is unique as a name. It is thought to derive from
605-580: Is adjacent to the upper park. The landscape and valley have extensive archaeological remains, but many are on private land or in dangerous locations. It is recommended that all visitors keep to public rights of way or take organised tours. Whistlejacket Whistlejacket is an oil-on-canvas painting from about 1762 by the British artist George Stubbs showing the Marquess of Rockingham 's racehorse approximately at life-size, rearing up against
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#1732802443368660-411: Is in "very good condition" and was " lined , cleaned and restored a few years before its acquisition." One story was that Rockingham had intended to commission an equestrian portrait of George III ; Stubbs would paint the horse while two other notable portrait and landscape painters would fill in the king and the landscape respectively. In one account, The painting was supposedly intended to accompany
715-413: Is of the type invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. Newcomen invented the world's first practical steam engine, creating mechanical power using steam for the first time. Newcomen's genius was to use the force of atmospheric pressure acting on a piston at the top of a steam-filled cylinder, into which water had been injected to create a vacuum, to move the piston and a beam attached to it. James Watt made
770-399: Is that Rockingham was so impressed by Whistlejacket's furious reaction when confronted by Stubbs working on the painting in his stable, that he ordered it hung without further decoration. Stubbs produced other paintings of horses against blank backgrounds for Rockingham, nothing in the painting indicates that it is not complete, and the detail of the shadows cast by Whistlejacket's rear legs on
825-470: Is understood to have been an 'industrial estate village', built and operated in addition to the family's traditional aristocratic estate village of Wentworth. Additions to the village instructed by the Earls in the mid 19th century included rows of miners and ironworkers' cottages, a miners lodging house, church, indoor market, coaching inn, school, cricket club and architecturally impressive workshops, known as
880-705: The Heritage Lottery Fund allowed the National Gallery , London to acquire it for £11 million. Stubbs was a specialist equine artist who in 1762 was invited by Rockingham to spend "some months" at Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire , his main country house. Stubbs had painted many horse portraits, with and without human figures, but the heroic scale and lack of background of Whistlejacket are "unprecedented" in his work and equine portraits in general and "contemporaries were so astonished that
935-677: The Old English personal name of Aelfsige (mentioned in Cartulary of Nostell Priory , 1259–66) and the Old Norse word kjarr , denoting a marsh or brushwood. From the late 18th century, Elsecar was transformed into an 'industrial estate village' for nearby Wentworth Woodhouse , with multiple collieries and two major ironworks. It is seen as one of the UK's first model villages and a precursor to Saltaire. A 1795 Newcomen steam engine at
990-633: The Tate Gallery 1984–85, and the National Gallery from 1996 before its purchase the next year. It is now displayed in the centre of room 34, and is framed by doorways at the end of a long enfilade so that it can be seen through ten intervening rooms from the Sainsbury Wing, at the other end of the gallery. It is consistently among the top ten most popular National Gallery paintings in various forms of reproduction. The painting
1045-418: The hierarchy of genres . To a greater degree than any earlier painter, Stubbs produced genuinely individual portraits of specific horses, paying intimate attention to details of their form. Minute blemishes, veins, and the muscles flexing just below the surface of the skin are all visible and reproduced with great care and realism. Whistlejacket had already retired after a fairly successful racing career, but
1100-705: The 1790s to closure in the 1880s. the ironworks were at times managed direct as part of the Wentworth Woodhouse estate. In the second half of the 19th century, both ironworks were leased and operated together by famous ironmakers the Dawes Brothers, originally from West Bromwich. In 1838 a horse-drawn tramroad was constructed to link the Dearne and Dove Canal with the Milton Ironworks, Tankersley Park ironstone mines, Lidgett Colliery and
1155-471: The 1880s, its buildings were integrated into the colliery workshops and the ironworks largely forgotten until very recently. A Scheduled Ancient Monument as of 2018, the casting shed, rolling mill, workshop, entrance arch and offices have survived intact. The impressive blast wall, blowing engine house, waggon ways, ironworks reservoir and charging plateau have survived in ruinous form and plans are being made for their future conservation. The landscape around
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#17328024433681210-560: The Elder 's famous story of Zeuxis and Parrhasius . When Wentworth was remodelled under a later Earl Fitzwilliam , a 40-foot square "Whistlejacket Room" was created to showcase the painting, with only single family portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence to keep it company. Wentworth Woodhouse ceased to be occupied by the family after World War II, and the painting was loaned to Kenwood House in London from 1971 to 1981,
1265-467: The Elsecar Ironworks, the extension of the village conservation areas and extensive listings, creating many new Grade II* listed buildings. Elsecar Heritage Centre is a visitor attraction based in the former New Yard colliery workshops. Operated by Barnsley Museums, it has independent shops, studios, galleries, cafes and a large antiques centre. A visitor centre and regular tours share
1320-478: The Elsecar New Colliery is the oldest steam engine still in situ, anywhere in the world. The village now attracts over 500,000 visitors each year, to its heritage centre, historic sites and award-winning park. In 1870–72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Elsecar as having a population of 1912 and 353 dwelling places. The village had developed rapidly since
1375-509: The Marquess of Rockingham. He famously won a four-mile race at York in August 1759 against a strong field, beating Brutus by a length, and then retired to stud, being ten years old. He was beaten only four times in his racing career, but was notoriously temperamental and difficult to manage. He was "averagely successful at stud", and must have died before Rockingham's death in 1782, as he
1430-557: The Milton Ironworks and the New Colliery boiler house. In 2017 Caesium magnetometer , Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Earth Resistance Tomography (ERT) surveys were conducted at Elsecar to attempt to determine the location of a number of former industrial buildings. A major legacy of the Elsecar Heritage Action Zone was the creation of two new Scheduled Ancient Monuments at Hemingfield Colliery and
1485-518: The New Yard. A private railway station for the Earl, including a waiting room for privileged and Royal guests, was added in 1870 and now serves as a nursery for local children. The Earls oversaw expansion of deep coalmining and sinking of new collieries for over a century and maintained a direct controlling interest in the management of the village's collieries until nationalisation in 1947. In 1794-5,
1540-583: The Thorncliffe Ironworks at Chapeltown . Stationary engines were used for the incline sections, and remained in operation until about 1880. The two Elsecar Ironworks are credited with a variety of major achievements, including making iron for John Rennie's bridge over the Thames at Southwark which opened in 1819, bridges designed for the Isle de Bourbon (now Reunion) by Marc Isambard Brunel ,
1595-499: The area since the 14th century, the first major colliery, Elsecar Old, was not sunk until 1750. It was taken on by the Marquis of Rockingham in 1752, later consolidated onto a hilltop to the west of the village and is thought to have been painted by George Stubbs, around the same time he painted Whistle Jacket . The village was transformed from the 1790s at the direction of the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse , with
1650-650: The area would receive a share of £6 million. As part of the HAZ project, in 2019 a Historic Area Assessment was developed, "intended to illustrate the varied character and significance of the village and its setting in order to inform interpretation, conservation and development under the direction of revised planning guidance". To inform this, there was an extensive programme of historical research, archaeology, architectural investigation and community involvement. Of particular note, two major community digs, planned and carried out involving dozens of volunteers, took place on
1705-605: The cadavers with block and tackle to better able sketch them in different positions. The careful notes and drawings he made during his studies were published in 1766 in The Anatomy of the Horse . Even before the publication of his book, Stubbs's dedication to his subject reaped him rewards: his drawings were recognized as more accurate than the work of other equine artists and commissions from aristocratic patrons quickly followed. Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
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1760-443: The commission to paint Whistlejacket ", though some indication of the likely price comes from a receipt by Stubbs dated 30 December 1762 for "Eighty Guineas for one Picture of a Lion and another of a Horse Large as Life", probably a different picture for Rockingham's London house. Earlier in 1762, Stubbs had painted a second portrait of Whistlejacket, with two other unnamed stallions and a groom, Joshua or Simon Cobb. According to
1815-493: The edges of the village since the 14th century. The Ironworks opened in 1795 on a site near the head of the Elsecar Branch of the Dearne and Dove Canal . The canal, opened to service the coal mines , was extended a short distance to a new basin nearer the ironworks. The works made pig iron from locally mined ores as well as a range of cast iron products, mostly for the construction trades. A little further away, atop
1870-418: The emphasis is on the rider. Here the horse is alone and in a natural state, producing a "romantic study in solitude and liberty". Like many of Stubbs's other paintings of horses and other animals in the wild, including several versions of a horse attacked by a lion perched on its back, the painting is an early intimation of Romanticism , as well as a challenge to the lowly place animal painting occupied in
1925-608: The engine to take it back to his new museum in America. His request was refused by Earl Fitzwilliam. In 2014, a major project was completed to rescue and conserve the engine, supported by Barnsley Council, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England. It now runs on hydraulics with regular open days from Easter to October each year when visitors can also look down the New Colliery mineshafts. John and William Darwin & Co. of Sheffield opened
1980-608: The first Royal to go underground in the UK, as he acknowledged during his visit. King William IV, when Duke of Clarence, had been taken into Elsecar Old Colliery in 1828. Elsecar Main Colliery was closed in October 1983. Many Elsecar colliers went to work at Cortonwood, just down the canal towpath, where a few months later the Miners Strike of 1984-5 began. Elsecar Workshops were sold off by British Coal soon after, ending
2035-500: The first furnace at Elsecar Ironworks (at the bottom of Forge Lane) in 1795. In 1799 another ironworks was founded at Milton, by the Walker Brothers of Rotherham, less than a mile to the west of Elsecar, on a hilltop in full view of the village of Wentworth just across the valley. The Earls maintained a close involvement in the village's two ironworks. Although leased to a series of major ironmasters from their establishment in
2090-520: The ground suggest that this is how Stubbs intended the picture to be seen. Whistlejacket was a chestnut stallion , with flaxen -coloured mane and tail, believed to be the original colouring of the wild Arabian breed. He was a Thoroughbred race horse foaled in 1749 at the stud of Sir William Middleton, 3rd Baronet at Belsay Castle in Northumberland, and named after a contemporary cold remedy containing gin and treacle . His sire
2145-571: The hill to the west, was built the Milton Ironworks , working in the same market place as its rival. This was also connected to the canal basin, but this time by a tramway, believed to be at a gauge less than Standard Gauge , the rails being set on stone blocks. Elsecar Ironworks went into bankruptcy in 1827, and as it was situated on lands leased from the Wentworth estate it was these who took them over. From its opening in February 1850
2200-488: The local reservoir and sent them into the Sheffield Star with the caption Elsecar-by-the-Sea. The name caught on and with the help of a good transport link from Sheffield via the local railway station , a thriving tourism business was established. Between the wars, Hoyland Nether Urban District Council created a public park to take advantage of the influx of visitors, on land granted by Earl Fitzwilliam, adding
2255-560: The sinking of its first deep colliery, the cutting of a canal, the building of two ironworks and associated housing designed by architect John Carr of York . As a result, Elsecar is now recognised to be one of the first model villages in the UK and a precursor to historic places such as Saltaire. The subsequent development and expansion of the village continued to be closely overseen by the Fitzwilliam dynasty. Uniquely in Europe, Elsecar
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2310-649: The steam engine at Leawood on the Cromford Canal, iron with which armour plate was rolled for HMS Warrior and replacement bridges for Sheffield when the city's bridges were destroyed in the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864. Two smaller family-run forges were also established in the mid 19th century and survived well into the 20th century, including the Davey Brothers foundry, whose drain and manhole covers can still be seen across
2365-528: The steam engine far more efficient half a century later, but by that time Newcomen engines were widely established and powering industry across the UK and further afield. Now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the Elsecar Newcomen is understood to be the oldest steam engine in the world still in situ where it was originally built. The engine pumped water from the colliery workings from 1795 to 1923. In 1928, Henry Ford visited Elsecar and tried to purchase
2420-517: The turf , for there is always a possibility of some sort of pleasure in that; but not the smallest in other sorts". Wentworth House , as it was then known, had been "rebuilt by his father on a huge scale" and empty walls needed filling. Horace Walpole , on the visit in 1766 mentioned below, complained of the un-landscaped park "This lord loves nothing but horses, and the enclosures for them take place of everything". The Wentworth archives, "though unusually comprehensive, contain no clear reference to
2475-409: The unique history of the village, and includes a highly detailed digital reconstruction of the village and valley as it was in the 1880. The former rolling mill of the Elsecar Ironworks is now a major event space, with standing capacity of up to 1000 people. Elsecar Park has a bandstand , children's playground, a cafe, and a pitch and putt golf course . The reservoir, now a local nature reserve ,
2530-432: The village has extensive archaeological remains and historic sites, which can be explored on organised guided tours. They include ironworks ruins and ponds, furnace charging plateau, collieries, bell pits, footrills, mineshafts, waggon ways, the industrial canal and reservoir, canal basins, early-Victorian railway, clinker-reinforced trackways, lime kiln sites, coking furnaces and much else. Built heritage that survives in
2585-466: The village is similarly extensive, including miners and ironworkers housing, historic pubs, cricket club, parsonage, vicarage, toll house, miners lodging house, the Milton Hall exhibition hall, the church, steam mill, two schools, and the extensive buildings of the New Yard workshops and Elsecar Ironworks. In 1910 a local amateur photographer, Herbert Parkin, took photographs of families paddling in
2640-442: The village's first deep colliery was sunk, a few metres to the east of the village's proposed canal basin. Over the following years, Elsecar New Colliery was expanded and the original Elsecar (Old) Colliery modernised. In the 1840s and 1850s, two state-of-the-art collieries were sunk, Simon Wood and Elsecar Low (later renamed Hemingfield). The latter survives, has been rescued and is now in community ownership. In 1851, Queen Victoria
2695-464: The village's ties to the coal industry. In the following years, the village suffered from severe economic and social problems, as did all the mining villages in the region. The mid-1990s saw the repurposing of the former colliery workshops into a new visitor destination, Elsecar Heritage Centre . During the sinking of the Elsecar New Colliery in 1795, Earl Fitzwilliam had a large atmospheric beam engine installed to pump water from deep underground. It
2750-475: The village. The two main Elsecar ironworks were closed in the 1880s. The Milton Ironworks was on the site of what is now the Forge Playing Field. Remains include what's left of the blast wall, a bank running across the field, and furnace ponds by The Furnace pub. The Elsecar ironworks is once of the best surviving industrial complexes from the mid-19th century. After the ironworks was closed in
2805-594: The works and collieries were connected to the Elsecar Branch of the South Yorkshire Railway giving easy access to the wharves on the River Trent at Keadby . In due time this enabled the companies to obtain ironstone from the Scunthorpe fields, which were rediscovered in 1859. The site of the ironworks is today part of the Elsecar Heritage Centre . The Elsecar Steam Railway operates from
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#17328024433682860-665: Was Mogul and grandsire was the Godolphin Arabian ; through his dam, he was also descended from the Byerly Turk , and various other Arabians and Turks. He raced from 1752, winning many races in the North. He lost to Jason in the King's Plate at Newmarket in 1755, but won the following year, when he was also narrowly beaten by Spectator for the Jockey Club Plate at Newmarket in 1756. He was sold soon after to
2915-578: Was a Whig politician, later to be twice Prime Minister , and exceptionally rich even by the standards of that wealthy group. In 1762 he commissioned Stubbs to produce a series of portraits of his horses, one of which was Whistlejacket. He was also a collector of art, commissioning several works in Italy on his Grand Tour in the late 1740s, but his great leisure interests were, typically for his class, horseracing and gambling . His wife wrote of her hopes that he would restrict himself to gambling "just upon
2970-465: Was painted in this unusual form to show "a supremely beautiful specimen of the pure-bred Arabian horse at its finest". Stubbs's knowledge of equine physiology was unsurpassed by any painter; he had studied anatomy at York and, from 1756, he spent 18 months in Lincolnshire where he carried out dissections and experiments on dead horses to better understand the animal's physiology. He suspended
3025-472: Was taken outside the Great Exhibition , to see a column of Barnsley Seam coal which had been somehow mined intact by Elsecar miners and taken to London. The last colliery to open was Elsecar Main in 1908. King George V went underground there in 1912, for which he received respect and recognition, as news had come through that morning of a terrible disaster at Cadeby Colliery. King George was not
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