High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Wentworth Castle is a the former seat of the Earls of Strafford, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. The Esate has been n the care of the Wentworth Castle Heritage Trust since 2001 and is open to the public year round 7 days a week. The House is now home to the Northern College for Residential and Community Education. It was originally the seat of the Earls of Strafford. An older house existed on the estate, then called Stainborough, when it was purchased by Thomas Wentworth, Lord Raby (later Earl of Strafford), in 1711. It was still Stainborough in Jan Kip`s engraved bird`s-eye view of parterres and avenues, 1714, and in the first edition of Vitruvius Britannicus, 1715 (illustration, left). The name was changed in 1731. The original name survives in the form of Stainborough Castle, a sham ruin constructed as a garden folly (illustration below) on the estate.