The Everingham's built Stainborough Hall in c.1567 from the stone from the recently dissolved Priory at Monk Bretton. Thomas Cutler bought the house in 1596 and pulled down the hall to build a new one (Ashurst 1966, 121). Thomas Wentworth bought the estate in 1708 and commissioned an even larger house and developed the gardens and surrounding parkland, in part to impress a rival branch of the family at Wentworth Woodhouse (English Heritage 2001). The estate was sold in 1948 and the house is now used as an adult education centre. Stainborough was a medieval manor that probably had an associated settlement of which there is no current trace. On a c.1730 estate map (copy in Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park Heritage Trust 2006 - accessed 3/04/07) one of the fields is marked as Town Ing and the layout of the fields is suggestive of an enclosed townfield. This may be an indicator that the park has been built over a former settlement. There is fragmentary legibility of this field pattern in the modern landscape with some field boundaries remaining. It has been suggested that the 18th century folly Stainborough Castle was built on the remains of an Iron Age enclosure. There is documentary evidence for a ruined structure on this site before the construction of the castle (Ashurst 1991, 34) and it is possible this was the remains of a medieval manor house.