Pride and Prejudice fans with $12.5 million to spare will be delighted to know that Wentworth Woodhouse, the spectacular country house that may have inspired the sprawling, fictional Darcy Estate in Jane Austen's opus has hit the market last week, according to HotHeadlines.com.
The 1966 Guinness World Record holder of the largest private home in Britain is widely considered as one of the finest examples of 18th century British architecture. Set in 85 acres of land, the house's 606-foot long façade is nearly twice as long as Buckingham Palace's.
The grandiosity of the house itself is undeniable, featuring a magnificent maze spanning several wings, more than 300 rooms and about five miles of corridors. One of its most prominent structures is the Palladia wing, which has a sequence of State Rooms that will not look out of place in a royal palace, from the heavily gilded Whistlejacket Room, the sculpture-studded Pillared Hall, and the lavish Marble Saloon, which is 60- feet long and 40-feet high and bordered by pillars and decorated with complex plasterwork, according to Forbes.
Jane Austen is known to be familiar with the area, and it is very possible that the house's elegance may have inspired her to use it as one of the models for Pemberly, Darcy's Estate. One of the most prominent clues to this lies in the name of Austen's famous character himself - Fitzwilliam Darcy.
The Wentworth house was owned by the Fitzwilliam family at the time when she was writing Pride and Prejudice.
However, apart from the $12.5 million price tag, prospective buyers would need to be prepared for a lot of restoration work that the house needs, and ongoing work is needed to address damage the house sustained from mining activities that took place in the 1940's and 1950's, as reported by Forbes.
One thing is sure, however: If ever there is a house that is worth splurging on simply because of its elegance and significance in architecture history, and literature, then this house is it.
