Pride of place Rare camellias bloom again after £5m restoration at Yorkshire estate

These plants would have been the Van Dycks of their day, there was that much kudos attached to them," said Scott Jamieson, a head gardener, in front of some of the oldest, rarest camellias in the western world which are now flourishing, against all odds, in South Yorkshire.

- Mark Brown

Jamieson has led a team on a remarkable £5m heritage project.

Yesterday the restored camellia house at Wentworth Woodhouse, one of Britain's grandest stately homes, was opened as a tea house.

For the shrubs to have survived and to now look so good in their new home is, all involved in the project agree, a wonderful thing.

Nobody minds that outsiders are so surprised they're in Rotherham.

The camellias were imported for Britain's wealthy families in the 18th century on ships belonging to the East India Company. They were, wrongly, judged so fragile that they needed to be pampered in a building with lots of light and a stove to heat the brick walls.

Some of the first camellias to arrive from China came to Wentworth Woodhouse, with each plant said to cost its owner, the 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, the equivalent of a housemaid's annual wage.