The Home is thought to have been built about 1763 and was the home of the last Royal Governor, John Wentworth. Governor Wentworth described the home as a "a small hut with little comfortable apartments". This "small hut" is now registered on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered to be one of the finest architecturally built homes in the region, during the eighteenth century.
HistoryThe Mark Wentworth Home consists of three buildings: A revolutionary era mansion, the Manor building with brick facade, and the Wentworth wing. Although the Home's most notable occupant, Governor John Wentworth, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and was generally sympathetic to the colonists in their early disagreements with the crown, he remained loyal and was forced to leave New Hampshire in 1775.  Portsmouth was the site of many Revolutionary War incidents and the loyalist governor often ignited fierce opposition. On one particularly explosive occasion, a mob of patriots gathered outside the mansion and demanded the surrender of Governor Wentworth's associate, Colonel John Fenton. Before Fenton gave himself up, shots were fired and the evidence remains to this day with bullet holes in the plaster above the fireplace of the mansion's front room. Over one hundred years later, a relative of the governor, Susan Wentworth, acquired the mansion and founded The Mark H. Wentworth Home for Chronic Invalids, naming it after her father, Dr. Mark Hunkings Wentworth. In the 1920s, a slate-roofed brick building with a charm of its own was added to the historic home. The largest building was built in the 1980s to expand the original nursing home, and was completely renovated in 2007-2008 when the whole Home was remodeled into Assisted Living suites and an upgraded Nursing Unit. |