Twenty-four architects and heritage specialists from across the Commonwealth are taking part in a three-week summer school to help restore part of Wentworth Woodhouse, a Grade II*-listed country house in Rotherham, learning traditional heritage craft skills in the process. Attendees from countries including Barbados, India, New Zealand and Trinidad and Tobago are working on the Grade I-listed stable block alongside experts, with organisers hoping the transferable skills they gain will help protect heritage sites back in their home countries, several of which lack similar training opportunities.

The programme, run jointly by the Commonwealth Heritage Forum and the City & Guilds of London Art School, was chosen to take place at Wentworth Woodhouse because of the site's architectural importance and its ongoing major restoration, which demands specialist expertise. The delegation, made up of lime specialists, archaeologists, conservationists and construction experts, has been repairing sash windows over 200 years old, cleaning early 19th-century statues and carrying out lime pointing. Participants said the experience would help preserve colonial-era buildings and heritage sites in their own countries, where craft skills are often at risk of dying out, while also allowing them to share their own conservation approaches with UK counterparts.