The government ordered opencast mining up to Wentworth Woodhouse, and the Fitzwilliam earldom ended in 1979

Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire has more than 300 rooms and an east front of 618 feet, the longest of any English country house. The Earls Fitzwilliam owned it and the coal under it. The 7th Earl was among the richest men in Britain. Relatives accused him of being a changeling, a baby swapped in at his birth in Canada in 1872. In 1946 Fuel Minister Manny Shinwell ordered opencast mining up to the house. Coal was nationalised in 1947. On 13 May 1948 the 8th Earl, Peter, aged 37, died in a plane crash in France with Kathleen Cavendish, sister of John F. Kennedy. His fortune, estimated at £45 million, went to his only child, Lady Juliet, aged 13: the unentailed land, Irish estates and much of the art. The earldom and the house went to a distant cousin, Eric, and then to Eric's second cousin Tom. When Tom, the 10th Earl, died childless on 21 September 1979, the titles became extinct. A teacher training college leased most of the house from 1949 to 1979. The Fitzwilliam trustees sold it in 1989. The buyer's business failed and a Swiss bank repossessed it. Clifford Newbold bought it next. The Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust bought it for £7 million. In 2026 the trust is restoring it and took 126,000 visitors in 2024. Lady Juliet Tadgell lives at Bourne Park, Kent. The remaining Fitzwilliam estates passed to Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland.