Barnsley museum in England's top 15 free attractions list
Cannon Hall was acquired by the council from the Spencer-Stanhope family in the 1950s and opened as a museum. It has a Georgian walled garden, glasshouses and Victorian pleasure grounds.The data estimated that tourists brought in £3.7bn for the region's economy.Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster was the most popular paid-for attraction in 2024, with more than 894,000 people buying tickets.Commenting on the data, Sarah McLeod, chair of the South Yorkshire Local Visitor Economy Partnership, said: "By working collaboratively, we can drive sustainable growth, ensuring that - now more than ever - we encourage visitors to stay longer and spend more with our local businesses."
The South Yorkshire Local Visitor Economy Partnership consists of Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster and Sheffield councils, the South Yorkshire mayoral office, and representatives from the private sector.Coppard added: "Our heritage and culture doesn't just enrich our lives and shape who we are - it drives our economy too. With a £3.7bn boost and more than 32,000 jobs supported, the impact of arts, culture, and tourism is clear. When we invest in our people, our places and our stories, we create growth and opportunity, and we build hope."
Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
17 minutes ago
- Times
Financial Ombudsman Service boss paid £230,000 after ousting
The ousted head of the Financial Ombudsman Service received a pay-off of almost £230,000, it has been disclosed in the annual report. Abby Thomas, who left abruptly on 6 February, was paid £229,869 in severance payments on top of her normal salary. The payoff included £100,000 for loss of office, £107,692 in lieu of notice and £22,177 for a period of gardening leave that began on the day she left, the FOS said. MPs on the Treasury select committee have hit out at the manner of her departure and criticised the FOS chairwoman Baroness Manzoor for refusing to answer questions on why Thomas left and whether she was forced out. The FOS, which rules on complaints by consumers about financial services firms and can set compensation orders, is under pressure to reform. Rachel Reeves has pledged to curb its powers so it no longer acts like a regulator after complaints from the industry that it has increased the cost of 'mass redress events'. It has been dealing with a significant rise in claims, mainly related to car finance loans, but also because of concerns about other consumer loans and more people complaining about banks' handling of frauds. Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Treasury committee, said this month: 'The handling of this situation by the senior leadership has been deeply disappointing.' Thomas, a former Virgin Media executive, served for less than three years. She has been replaced by James Dipple-Johnstone as chief ombudsman and Jenny Simmonds as interim chief executive. Manzoor is due to retire on August 1. The FOS received 450,000 new inquiries in the year to March, up from 330,000. The motor finance industry is braced for a judgment from the Supreme Court this Friday that could determine the scale of compensation payments for failing to disclose commissions paid to dealers.
Finextra
34 minutes ago
- Finextra
NatWest adopts Pexa digital remortgage platform
NatWest has agreed a deal with vendor Pexa to start carrying out digital remortgage deals from next year. 0 Pexa says that its platform will help NatWest increase the speed and certainty of digital remortgage and sale and purchase transactions to homeowners, driving efficiency and transparency. Barry Connolly, MD, home buying and ownership, NatWest, says: "The Pexa platform will help to reduce the administrative burden and reduce the risk of fraud. This partnership will also accelerate processes through the automatic sharing of data between parties. We look forward to seeing the results." NatWest and Pexa initially inked an exploratory deal in 2024 and are now pushing ahead after the vendor secured FCA approval to act as a Third Party Managed Account provider. With the bank conducting 12.6% of all mortgages in the UK market in 2024, the agreement is a milestone for Pexa ahead of its launch of its broader sale and purchase solution in the autumn which will enable it to serve over 70% of property transaction types in England and Wales. Joe Pepper, UK CEO, Pexa, says: "It is a pivotal moment in our mission for a lender the size of NatWest to see the potential benefits Pexa brings its customers and commit to adopting our platform to support its remortgage transactions."
Times
3 hours ago
- Times
If Kate and William upsize, will an old pile with a tennis court be a curse?
William and Kate are reported to be considering a move from their cosy four-bedroom home in the grounds of Windsor Castle for somewhere more expansive — and certainly grander. If it's true, they will be swapping their picturesque cottage for a gothic fort. Fort Belvedere, also in Windsor Great Park, and where King Edward VIII signed his abdication papers, has eight bedrooms, 59 acres, a swimming pool, tennis court and a walled garden. It's the upsizing equivalent of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle moving into Toad Hall. The idea makes sense on many levels. William is the future king, has three children, presumably a number of staff, and needs a house where you can find room to store ceremonial robes as well as boxes of Lego. The idea of more space for a young family will certainly be enticing. But some aspects of the move to somewhere much larger will be challenging too. And I know. I've done it. • Read more expert advice on property, interiors and home improvement Ten years ago, on a whim, I decided to sell my one-bedroom basement flat in north London for a grand eight-bedroom house with two staff cottages and an enormous walled garden set in 72 acres of Capability Brown parkland in Hertfordshire. We managed to get a hefty mortgage, some financial help from family, and a good price for my flat. Madness, of course, but the house and park, belonging to the youngest son of an earl, had fallen into slight disrepair, and my husband and I fancied a project. The house was so charming and so near London, had great potential, and was reached by a magical mile-long drive that took you into a stable-yard through the archway of a bell tower. Buying the property took every penny we had. There would be little spare each month to run and restore it. The immensity of the task ahead was very apparent the day we moved in. With all the previous owner's grand furniture and metres-high family portraits removed the house looked bleak, shabby and even larger than before. We couldn't afford a proper removal company so had hired some men with a lorry that we had found online. They got lost while trying to find the property and didn't arrive with my modest amount of furniture until 4am. When they had finished unloading our possessions I was dismayed to discover that everything we owned fitted into one small room of the house. Over the next few weeks I spent a lot of time on eBay searching for sofas and beds. When you upsize so dramatically it takes some time to adjust to the new proportions you now live within. A pretty three-seater sofa I bought online, which looked suitable in size and period for our Georgian house, appeared ridiculously small when I placed it in the drawing room, as if it had been stolen from a doll's house. Our bedroom was enormous too. It took about five minutes to cross it to reach the en suite bathroom. A few weeks after we moved in, the soles of my feet began to ache so much it hurt to walk. I went to see my GP because I thought I might have developed plantar fasciitis. The doctor asked me if I spent much time walking around in bare feet. Only to get to the bathroom each day, I told him. That was what had caused the problem. I would need to wear shoes to go for a wee in the future, he said. • Ten planning applications and £60,000: the torment of building a house Slowly, we managed to populate areas of the house and buy mattresses to go with the eight beds we now owned; paint the giant walls; sand the endless wooden floors; pull up stained carpets, restore rotten window frames and replace the 1970s kitchen units. It may still have looked more Bleak House than Downton Abbey, but it did at least look like people lived there. When you upsize so dramatically, it also takes a period of adjustment to use the extensive space you now have. We were used to living in an open-plan flat where everything was within easy reach of the sofa. So initially we tended to live within only three of the property's many rooms. It was hard to think of a reason to leave the sitting room you were in to sit in another sitting room instead just because you could. I became obsessed that it was a waste to have so many rooms that were unused, even unseen. So every evening when I got back from work I would wander round the house, and the two empty cottages, and peer into every room we owned. It seemed unappreciative not to do so. By the time I had done this each night it was time for bed. And, first world problem, I know, but losing your glasses or misplacing the house keys in a property this size is a monumental disaster. A whole weekend can be spent searching every room and garden bench to find them. Eventually, keys and spectacles were fixed with electronic trackers to help us locate them more speedily. And thank God for the Find My function on iPhones. Cash to cover his new home's running costs is unlikely to be a problem for the Prince of Wales. His income from the Duchy of Cornwall will more than cover the heating bills and the costs of a gardener or two at Fort Belvedere. We weren't quite so prosperous, so winters were chilly, parts of the house would effectively be closed until spring, and the walled garden looked a little underwhelming populated with only a couple of small vegetable beds and a row of dahlias. You needed a sat-nav to locate them they looked so minuscule. And it was three years before we could afford to renovate and use the overgrown tennis court. It looked more like an allotment than a Wimbledon lawn. • Babies or house: how would you rather spend half a million pounds? Eventually, we rented out the house for film and shoot locations to fund further renovations. Sometimes this was quite fun. We watched them film a scene from The Crown on our staircase (when Princess Margaret meets Antony Armstrong-Jones) and witnessed a gruesome murder take place in the cellar for a horror film. But it had it's drawbacks too: you would get shouted at for flushing the loo upstairs when they were filming an emotional scene downstairs; objects you cherished would never be seen again unless you watched the film they had been borrowed for; and sometimes I'd get home from work, desperate to flop in front of the TV, only to discover the sitting room had been turned into a bathroom and the sofa had been replaced by a bidet. One July evening I returned to find reindeer and snow in the garden and a bunch of small children running round a dining room laden with festive food and tinsel. A department store was filming its Christmas ad campaign at our house. After five years of extraordinary adventures, cashflow challenges and unforgettable house parties — one New Year's Eve all 32 guests stayed overnight with us — we were made an offer we couldn't refuse to sell the house. The family who brought it from us renovated it for seven years before moving in. In that time, we've already bought and sold three times. We now live in a four-bedroom farmhouse in Cumbria, a house more appropriate to the income I receive from the Duchy of Langmead. It's probably the house that I've been happiest in. I quite like being downwardly mobile. My upsize days are over. William and Kate's are only just beginning.
