This July, all eyes will be on Wentworth Woodhouse as the stately home opens its doors and grounds to the RHS Flower Show.

So, what better time to dig into the story of the woman at the helm of the house and its flourishing restoration – Sarah McLeod OBE.

As chief executive of Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, Sarah has been central to bringing the stately home back to life.

Her vision and creativity have unfurled this long-dormant rose, petal by petal. What once was a symbol of exclusivity is now blossoming into a vibrant community asset that holds accessibility at its heart.

Throughout her 25-year career in the heritage industry, Sarah has had a track record of making history relevant and reachable.

Her legacy lies in developing the UNESCO World Heritage site at Cromford Mills in Derbyshire, of founding the Heritage Trust Network, a peer-to-peer umbrella organisation that provides support to heritage projects right across the UK, and twice winning the prestigious Europa Nosta award.

To the unacquainted, you might have a perception that someone who has held such high-status positions in heritage was born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

But Sarah comes from a background far from privilege. She grew up in a low-income family where opportunity wasn’t guaranteed. Her leadership and plans for Wentworth Woodhouse are shaped by a real-world understanding of inequality.

She’s also a single parent to three children, one of whom is profoundly autistic, so understands the importance of creating heritage spaces where everyone feels welcome, heard, and valued.

Sarah is living proof that heritage no longer belongs to the few but can be reclaimed by all.

Born in Luton but spending her early years in the Bedfordshire town of Leighton Buzzard, Sarah was one of five children under the age of nine.

Her parents separated when she was young and the children moved north to Matlock with their mum and a string of stepfathers.

“We had a very 1960s Bohemian upbringing with lots of people sharing one house; it could certainly be described as communal living. My mother had increasingly severe mental health problems, so we were not well parented at all, in fact we were badly neglected and left to fend for ourselves.

“We avoided being taken in to care by persuading our school and the authorities that we could look after each other rather than being separated, and for that I am grateful. Thankfully, we were all born with a degree of intelligence, resilience, and independence.

“I never realised as a child how poor we were, but we had no money at all. We regularly had the electricity cut off and went without food so ballet lessons, the chance to learn a musical instrument, or holidays overseas were never a possibility.

“Our neighbour regularly told my younger brother and I that she had made too much dinner for her husband and needed help using it up. We thought she had problems with portion control. It never occurred to us that she was ensuring we got fed,” she says.

Surprisingly, Sarah says she had no interest in history as a child and failed her history O Level three times, giving it up as a bad job.

Instead, she dreamt of being an artist, influenced by the creative (if not chaotic) household she grew up in. Their home was filled with alternative décor – a colourful striped mural running along the walls, sequin-covered mannequins with bells on their heads dotted around the house and two broken TVs, one with sound but no picture, the other picture but no sound, that needed to be sequenced to make sense of any programme.

However, the family dynamic also put an end to Sarah’s artistic aspirations.

“It was a rule in our house that you had to leave at 16. I got a job in a hotel that offered me bed and board, which meant I could stay on at school to do my A Levels. At that time, before doing an art degree you had to do a foundation degree, which would have meant another year in Matlock. There were hardly any art scholarships back then and I just couldn’t stay. I always knew I wanted to leave Derbyshire to find a new life.”

Instead, Sarah went off to Leeds Polytechnic – now Leeds Beckett University – at 18 to study a business and finance degree, aided by maintenance grants of old for students from low-income families.

“It was the only course I could get onto with my A Levels and it was my meal ticket out. It was the first time in my life that I was truly able to leave my past behind.”

Like a wildflower breaking through concrete, Sarah finished her degree and moved to London in search of a new life. A series of jobs followed, starting with life insurance sales which she says was morally repugnant but earned her enough to pay off her student overdraft.

She then had her first experiences with the charity sector, working for a YTS training provider in Bethnal Green before moving on to the pioneering social settlement of Toynbee Hall in London’s East End.

“I’ve always done my own thing. I didn’t worry that I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life. I just kept learning and developing those transferrable skills.”

Then marriage and family came along. She met her husband in the West End where he ran bars, and Sarah says she had some of the best times of her life in those bars and clubs in Leicester Square and Covent Garden.

After backpacking around Thailand, India and her husband’s homeland of New Zealand, the pair returned to the UK and bought a hotel.

Kids came next, welcoming their first daughter, Jay, followed by son Sylvester (known as Vesty) who was born on Sarah’s 28^th birthday.

However, as Vesty went through the toddler stage, he was diagnosed with profound autism. Sarah and her husband were told their boy was non-verbal and would likely need round-the-clock care.

“He completely changed me – in a positive way. Being Vesty’s mum made me more patient, tolerant and just a better person. I realised how lucky I was to be picked to be the mother of a disabled child. It really opens your eyes to the world around you.”

When they found out about Vesty’s diagnosis, Sarah and her husband took the children to India for a year which she says was a pivotal period in their lives. They lived off the beaten track amongst the Tamali people in Madras, as it was known then. Jay went to her first school in India and little Vesty was welcomed with open arms.

“They didn’t speak any English and thought his name was Silver Star, not Sylvester. They didn’t believe he had a disability, but that he was a gift from Brahma, the Hindu god of creation. They never pressured him to talk like people did in England. The fishermen would hold his hand and walk down to the beach, and that little boy blossomed.

“Those crazy but wonderful people in India helped us see that this life wasn’t a curse, but a gift. Vesty is 30 now and has become the person he is because of that time in India.”

On moving back to England, Sarah’s marriage broke down and she did what she never in a million years imagined she’d do: move back home to Matlock.

However, she knew that Derbyshire had better special needs schools than in Westminster where they lived, and getting her son the right education was her main priority.

And it was back in Derbyshire where she was hit with a career curveball that would prove to be life changing.

“I went to the job centre and told them I was a single parent with a disabled child so I needed a job without much stress. They told me there was an admin role at Cromford Mills. I’d built up all these skills in sales, customer service, accounts, running a business, so I thought, great, I’ll give it a go.”

Cromford was run by The Arkwright Society, a volunteer-led organisation that had saved the old cotton mill in the 1970s. At the time, in the early 2000s, the volunteers had already achieved World Heritage Status. But after stepping foot on site, Sarah says she had an epiphany.

“I was interviewed by a panel of enthusiastic male industrial heritage volunteers, it felt like something out of the Dickensian times. I remember walking around the site thinking ‘what is this place?’

“I recognised very early on that there’s a life cycle to taking on a heritage site. The first phase is you need someone very driven to save it. They might not have the skills to operate or maintain it but they will drive it forward. The next phase is making is developing a successful business model for contemporary use. I could see what needed to happen and was just lucky to be there at the right time.”

Over the next nine years, Sarah worked her way up to CEO, doing every job along the way from cleaning toilets to working the tills. Being at the centre of operations helped Sarah see how the business worked – and how it could work better.

She was also juggling a busy family life, welcoming another teenager into her home with her adoptive daughter, Clare, who came to live with them when she was 14.

“It wasn’t easy being a single parent of three kids and running a site like Cromford. I needed to be really organised and the girls were helpful as teenagers. Raising a child with a disability is extremely challenging, but staying at home was never going to be an option for me. I needed to work to give me a break and focus on something else. I’d then go home and want to be with my kids, and it made me more determined to succeed for them and me.”

During her 16-year tenure at Cromford Mills, Sarah worked on projects big and small – the biggest and most complicated being the £6 million Building 17 scheme. They turned a huge, contaminated building dating back to 1785 into a usable space. The project won multiple awards including the Europa Nosta, a bit like the Oscars of the heritage industry.

At that point, Sarah says she felt like her career had come to a standstill. She knew after winning the Europa Nosta it was time to move on to pastures new. But what could be bigger than the task at Cromford?

Enter, stage left: Wentworth Woodhouse.

After the house was bought by Wentworth Woodhouse Preservation Trust, Sarah was headhunted for the role of CEO in 2017.

“I knew nothing about running a stately home or country estate, but the conservation and engagement principles were similar to what we did at Cromford. I came over to Rotherham to have a look and fell in love with the potential of it being a community-led project even if it was going to be hugely risky.”

On her very first meeting with the Trust’s chair, the late Julie Kenny, the pair hit it off straight away. It was like the meeting of two interconnecting minds: Julie the business brain with all the people skills and Sarah the creative one with the vision and ideas.

Their lives had followed a similar trajectory. Both from low-income, working-class backgrounds who’d had to forge their own paths in life through adversity and setbacks. They’d also both seen the detrimental effects a lack of exposure to culture and heritage could have on your education.

Together, they’d inherited not only a beautiful, old building, but the stories, spirit and responsibility that came with it.

“Julie had a strong desire to make the people of Rotherham proud of Wentworth. She was the one with the passion that would drive it. But I remember telling her that just restoring the house for its architectural significance alone wouldn’t justify the huge cost. Back then it was thought it would cost about £40 million when in reality it would be three-times as much. It needed a stronger reason to do it, and that was to make it a place of opportunity.

“The hardest thing about losing Julie is that she propped me up in moments of doubt. If there was a time when I was flagging and thinking something wasn’t possible, she’d say it was all about having blind faith. I just loved her. What a woman she was. It’s made me all the more determined to do it now she’s no longer here.”

Over the last eight years, Sarah and the Trust have reimagined the historic house as a hub for connection, culture and creativity. Sown with creative ideas, rooted in shared effort, and grown through collective care, it’s been reclaimed for the people, by the people.

“I love asking schoolkids who they think the house belongs to. They always think I own it. There’s a brilliant look on their faces when I say I don’t own it, they do. It belongs to all of us.”

It’s not just been about preserving its past, but also creating a sustainable future.

So far, there have been major capital works such as restoring the Camellia House, fixing the roof, and developing the gardens.

Sarah has been in the thick of it all, a roll-up-your-sleeves type of leader, using her skills in property development to propel the capital projects forwards while her team manage the day-to-day running of the house. And her expertise has proved fruitful, scooping another Europa Nostra award for the Camellia House project.

Next year, the Trust is launching their ‘Put Our House In Order’ plan with ideas to make the business stronger and more financially stable.

After all, there’s no endowment in place, no family money to fall back on, and the Trust needs to generate £3.5 million each year just to open.

“Finance is the biggest barrier we have. If you’re constantly on a knife edge, it brings a huge amount of stress. People often say to me ‘have you thought about this?’ Or ‘don’t you think you ought to have a bigger car park?’

“There is so much we could do but we have to be realistic. We can’t do it all at once so the difficulty is prioritising things and communicating that to the public.”

Plans for next year include installing a lift to improve access to the first floor rooms, reconfiguring the café and toilets to serve more people, creating an education centre for school visits, and building a £500,000 STEM-themed play area in the gardens which will take precedence over the Stable Block regeneration.

Sarah says they also want to develop training courses in conservation skills, upskilling the workforce in areas like masonry, joinery and metalwork for heritage buildings. When the Stable Block gets under way, they hope to set up a training school for adults with learning disabilities in a dedicated café space.

Alongside the capital works, strong emphasis has been placed on developing those links in the community. Exhibitions, family events, education, and volunteer opportunities have all been part of Sarah’s vision.

However, that’s not to say every decision has been welcomed with open arms. Heritage and culture is subjective; for every traditionalist who believes old buildings should be filled with antique furniture there is someone who embraces the digital and artistic transformation.

“This area has been chronically underfunded in culture and I’ve learnt not to push people too far, too soon. You’ve got to take them on a journey. But why shouldn’t Rotherham have the best, world-quality cultural offer? We’re just as worthy as anywhere else.

“I’m often asked if we want to be like Chatsworth but the honest answer is no. We‘ll be like Wentworth. We do things differently than everyone else. We want to be the most inclusive, most diverse and most fun heritage site.”

They say every flower blooms in its own time, but this summer could pave the way for an exciting future for Wentworth Woodhouse – and South Yorkshire. If they get things right for the RHS Flower Show, then it could return every three years.

Sarah says lots of hard work has gone into getting the house and grounds ready for the momentous event. In typical Wentworth Woodhouse style, the show will be different from other venues, with displays inside the house as well as on both the east lawn and within the west gardens. 

Ahead of the show, a historic sunken garden has been uncovered in the gardens. Thanks to digital mapping, and an ambitious gardening workforce, all the original paths have been dug out from underground.

In between her work at Wentworth and spending time with her three grown-up children, Sarah plays a key role in the wider heritage and culture network.

Last year, she was chosen to chair the South Yorkshire Local Visitor Economy Partnership, a Visit England initiative with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority and the four regional local authorities. She also sits on the northern committee of the National Heritage Lottery Fund, tasked with assessing grant applications.

For the last 12 years, she’s also been a course contributor on the MSc Building History course at Cambridge University, which she says keeps her on her toes.

“My students are all really clever and ask me lots of questions. But I love being able to share the importance of community-led regeneration. Why do we need to keep building new buildings when there are plenty of old buildings that can be saved? Why aren’t we recycling them when they just need retrofitting?”

For her services to heritage, Sarah was awarded an OBE last summer as part of the King’s birthday honours. She and her family went off to Windsor Castle in September where she was formally presented with her medal by Princess Anne.

“My younger self would be amazed at where I am now. If she knew I’d one day get an OBE or be lecturing at Cambridge she’d have thought that was really cool. I always thought I’d do something interesting but running a stately home is a million miles away from how I imagined my life panning out.

“There is no average day. It’s very much organised chaos! I could go from showing a VIP around to trying to locate Mr Jones’ lost shoes. It’s so multifaceted that I’m a bit like a conductor of an orchestra. But I feel so fortunate to have a job that brings so much joy to others and I’m lucky to work in a place like this every day.”