Welbeck abbey (and particularly the 5th duke of Portland [1800-1879]) are interesting areas of research, the 5th Duke apparently punished his staff by making them skate until exhausted on his own ice rink and “When the duke died, his heirs found all of the above ground rooms devoid of furniture except for one chamber in the middle of which sat the duke’s commode. The main hall was mysteriously floorless. Most of the rooms were painted pink. The one upstairs room in which the duke resided was packed to the ceiling with hundreds of green boxes, each of which contained a single dark brown wig.” *.
Stumbled across this man while perusing the wikipedia article on
hobby tunnelling (supercomputer pioneer Seymour Cray was among many who dug holes to unwind).
More on
John* Bentick, 5th Duke of Portland:
The Duke was a highly eccentric character who went out of his way to avoid contact with other human beings.
The duke was highly introverted and well known for his eccentricity; he did not want to meet people and never invited anyone to his home. He employed hundreds through his various construction projects, and though well paid, the employees were not allowed to speak to him or acknowledge him. The one worker who raised his hat to the duke was promptly dismissed. The tenants on his estates were aware of his wishes and knew they were required to ignore him if they passed by. His rooms had double letterboxes, one for in-coming and another for out-going mail. Only his valet was permitted to see him in person in his quarters—he would not even let the doctor in, while his tenants and workmen received all their instructions in writing.
...
He ventured outside mainly by night, when he was preceded by a lady servant carrying a lantern 40 yards (37 m) ahead of him. If he did walk out by day, the duke wore two overcoats, an extremely tall hat, an extremely high collar, and carried a very large umbrella behind which he tried to hide if someone addressed him.
If the duke had business in London, he would take his carriage to Worksop where he had it loaded onto a railway wagon. Upon his arrival at his London residence, Harcourt House in Cavendish Square, all the household staff were ordered to keep out of sight as he hurried into his study through the front hall.
He insisted on a chicken roasting at all hours of the day and the servants brought him his food on heated trucks that ran on rails through the tunnels.
However, he appears to have had some romantic interest in other people, as he had rumoured illegitimate children and proposed to opera singer Adelaide Kemble in his youth (she turned him down).
He poured most of his time into construction projects, including extensive below-ground rooms and tunnels.
A tunnel, more than one thousand yards in length, led from the house to the riding school. It was wide enough for several people to walk side by side. Parallel to it was another, more roughly constructed and used by workmen. A longer, more elaborate tunnel, one and a half miles long, intended as a carriage drive broad enough for two carriages to pass, led towards Worksop. This tunnel was abandoned in the late 19th century when a section forming part of the lake dam failed. Remaining stretches of tunnel survive on either side of the lake. The tunnel's skylights can be seen from the Robin Hood Way footpath which follows its course and a masonry entrance can be seen between two lodges at the northeastern limit of the park.
The 5th Duke excavated to create a number of extensions to the mansion. Although cited as being "underground rooms", these apartments are strictly "below ground", as they are not covered by earth or lawn; their flat roofs and skylights are visible in aerial photographs, although at ground level they are concealed from most directions by shrubbery. The largest is a great hall, 160 feet (49 m) long and 63 feet (19 m) wide intended as a chapel but used as a picture gallery and occasionally as a ballroom. There is a suite of five adjacent rooms constructed to house the duke's library.
The underground chambers—all of which were painted pink—included a great hall 160 ft (49 m) long and 63 ft (19 m) wide, which was originally intended as a chapel, but which was instead used as a picture gallery and occasionally as a ballroom. The ballroom reportedly had a hydraulic lift that could carry 20 guests from the surface and a ceiling that was painted as a giant sunset. The duke never organised any dances in the ballroom.
Other subterranean rooms included a 250 ft (76 m) long library, an observatory with a large glass roof, and a vast billiards room.
Photos from an excellent and informative
thread on Derelict Places, which also includes recent photos of the tunnels.
'Tunnel entrance to the south of the riding school'
'Plant corridor'
'Print of Welbeck from 1881'
Above ground, as noted in the quoted post, he kept to a few chambers painted pink and furnished only by commodes.
This is the 'great hall', 'ballroom' or 'picture gallery', the largest of the underground rooms:
And again in 1986:
One of his most grandiose improvements to Welbeck Abbey was the vast ballroom 154 feet by 64 feet, entirely sunk below ground and top-lit by bull’s-eye domes, well-lit, centrally heated and not at all damp. On arrival for a ball at Welbeck, guests were conveyed down to the ballroom, still in their carriages, by hydraulic lift to a gently-graded inclined tunnel leading them to the dance-floor. However, the fifth Duke never gave a ball, and the gas-lit splendour only came into its own when the sixth Duke, a distant cousin who never met his predecessor, inherited in 1870.
Source
There's a strange footnote to this strange story -- a legal case that claimed the duke moonlighted as a tradesman and faked his own death. From Wikipedia:
In 1897, a widow, Anna Maria Druce, claimed that the duke had led a double life as her father-in-law, a London upholsterer by the name of Thomas Charles Druce, who had supposedly died in 1864. The widow claimed that the duke had faked the death of his alter ego Druce to return to a secluded aristocratic life and that therefore her son was heir to the Portland estate. Her application to have Druce's grave in Highgate Cemetery opened to show that the coffin buried in it was empty and weighted with lead was blocked by Druce's executor. The case became the subject of continuing and unsuccessful legal proceedings.[9]
When it was discovered that Druce's children by a former wife were living in Australia, Anna Maria Druce's claims were backgrounded, but she was placed in an asylum in 1903. The case was taken up by George Hollamby Druce from 1903 onwards, who set up companies to finance his legal proceedings in 1905, and in 1907 even instituted a charge of perjury against Herbert Druce, the elder son of Thomas Charles Druce by his second wife, for having sworn that he had witnessed his father's death in 1864. Herbert had been born before his parents' marriage and thus was not eligible to claim the Portland title even if his father had been the duke.
The photograph which illustrates this article is that produced by the prosecution as being of the duke, but the defence denied this and said it was of Druce. Evidence of a fake burial was given by a witness named Robert C. Caldwell of New York and others, and it was eventually agreed that Druce's grave should be opened. This was done on 30 December 1907 under the supervision of Inspector Walter Dew and Druce's body was found present and successfully identified. Caldwell's evidence was so unreliable that the prosecution disowned him during the trial, and it transpired that he had habitually appeared in court giving sensational, and false, testimony. He was found insane and died in an asylum in 1911. Several witnesses were in turn charged with perjury.
Sidenote: Archduke Franz Ferdinand
nearly died in a hunting accident at Welbeck, 10 months prior to his assassination. If he had, perhaps we'd be living in a very different world today.
* First name actually William, but he went by John as every other man in his family was also named William,
George Foreman style.