What has happened at Beningbrough Hall?

Since 1975 Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire was home to a collection of Georgian portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. This was a way of bringing some of the riches from this internationally important gallery out of London to the North of England and to display them in a magnificent contemporary setting, just as some of the gallery’s Tudor portraits have found a home at Montacute House in Somerset.

From 1975 until 2021 Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire housed Georgian paintings from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery

In 2021 Beningbrough Hall closed for refurbishment, and when the house reopened two years later, the walls were bare and the rooms previously filled with eighteenth-century paintings now housed unsympathetic modern art of no great importance. What happened? We believe that the paintings have gone back to London and are now in storage. Meanwhile, Beningbrough Hall, for all the money that has been spent on refurbishment, looks sad and unloved.

Fine eighteenth-century portraits and furniture were displayed throughout the house until 2021

The paintings and furniture have gone into storage