Our village’s strict rules mean we all have to paint our doors the same colour – some tourists hate it but we love it
RESIDENTS say their village’s strict rules mean they all have to paint their doors the same colour – and they love it.
Wentworth, near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, does not have any takeaways or supermarkets – with all locals forced to share the same coloured doors, window frames and drainpipes.
New arrivals in the village are sat down and told that they must ask the village trust for permission to make even tiny tweaks to their homes.
Every door in the village is painted “Wentworth Green”, and every window-frame is off-white.
The trust sets strict rules so that the village remains an idyllic “time capsule” taking visitors back to the eighteenth century.
All 1,400 villagers are served by two pubs, one restaurant and a village shop stocking essentials.
Wentworth has been owned for almost 300 years by the posh Fitzwilliam Wentworth Estate – with baronet Sir Philip Naylor-Leyland and Lady Juliet Tadgell the current landlords.
Estate boss Alexander Davies-Terry told YorkshireLive: “I meet with everyone who moves into a property in Wentworth.
“If they want to make alterations, they can come to us and we’ll have a discussion about it.
“You drive through Wentworth and all the doors are green. It’s an aesthetic choice, some people might not like the green.”
Dad-of-two Matt Thompson, 43, said: “It’s forced to be traditional because of the rules the estate has to abide by – everything has to be uniform.
“Hence all the ‘Wentworth Green’. People come in and say ‘What a great village’.”
Matt added: “There are some old draconian rules where you can pass the rent down to the next generation, and that will be like peppercorn rent.
“But the minute a bloodline dies out, the rent goes up.”
Local dad Craig Horner, 53, said: “It’s a quaint quiet little village owned by a trust that likes to, as far is it can, keep things as it always has done.
“Once you introduce one thing then it snowballs.
“Before you know it, you’ve got neon signs, chip shops and all sorts – and they would never allow anything like that.”
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