ANNA Pavlova danced in the great marble hall for King George V.

My mate popped on her dancing shoes to trip the light fantastic across the very same floor – only by then the dazzling monochrome surface had very sensibly been given a protective covering of wood.

What else would you do when hundreds of students take over one of the country’s most fabulous houses? PE students who practised their lacrosse shots in their rooms but considerately replaced the game’s tough rubber balls with oranges.

“So splattered walls and orange juice for breakfast,” I inquire.

“We were great catchers,” said my now slightly chilly friend. “It taught us to give as you receive!”

Which, though meant as a coaching session in how to catch a ball with a lacrosse stick, was a pretty neat summary of how one former PE student felt about spending her four years at college in the palatial surroundings of Wentworth Woodhouse.

All this rooting about in the past was prompted by art historian Dan Cruickshank who crept around this very same, spectacular stately pile on the outskirts of Rotherham for a TV documentary broadcast this week.

He was all hushed tones and whopping great adjectives.

“An engine of state designed to dominate the land,” he called the house, built to impress in the 18th century by the first Marquis of Rockingham.

“Arguably the most artistically breath-taking house created in Britain,” said our expert from the world of academia.

It’s not quite how my school friend Liz describes it. Though, come to think of it, the hushed tones are much the same.

After sharing our sixth form years we ended our school days very differently. I went off to start work as an indentured junior reporter with six months’ probation ahead of me and a “then we’ll see” kind of pointer to my future. She was headed for south Yorkshire, for Lady Mabel PE College and a career teaching others the sports she had always excelled in.

Liz’s college days were packed with new friends, new skills to learn and a sense of wonder at landing (as usual, as she would say) on her feet in such an incredible place.

Not easy to impress friends and family trooped over to Rotherham to check out her new lodgings – and were instantly silenced.

We’d thought her biggest problem was probably learning enough new tunes on her accordion to pay for a round in the village pub.

But I came away having seen the house with “the longest frontage of any in Europe” and just one thought in mind.

Thank goodness the only thing I was in charge of was a typewriter and a sheet of carbon paper. She, on the other hand, was a college fire warden and it was up to her to see that Wentworth Woodhouse didn’t burn down – at least not on her watch.

Since then, Wentworth Woodhouse has become a favourite walking spot both for her family and mine.

The long drive down to the spectacular house and the strolls to the follies that punctuate the extravagant grounds offer miles of space in which to share hilarious stories about students living the country squire life style.

The students played badminton in Marble Hall. The gymnasiums were round the back in the biggest, most decorative stable block anyone could imagine.

One of the early Rockinghams was said to own 80 thoroughbreds and they were housed in the same style as the rest of the family.

In the 1970s, my mate spent some of her college days bunked down in an octagonal room fitted with an Adams fireplace, umpteen marble busts and Wedgewood blue and white paintwork.

“We drew lots for rooms and I suspect we got such a good one because my room-mate had friends in the year above,’’ she said. “They did the picking. Lesley was house warden and I was fire warden.

“We had a rota for front door duty. In those days, anyone who was out after 11pm had to be let in by the person on front door duty who spent the night sitting in Pillared Hall with the keys.

“One of our friends had a ground floor room which was a bit of a pain. That was the alternative route back into college if you were out late.”

It’s good to know that I have at least one friend who spent her formative years in high places.

“I was on duty the night that the Rockingham collection of china was stolen,” she says airily.

“Fortunately they didn’t get far. It was found later buried in the grounds.

“Oh and we were there when they removed Whistlejacket too. That was very sad. I remember the big removal van coming.”

What we are talking here is a painting and, in this house of course, an artwork on a grand scale.

Whistlejacket was the star racehorse of his day owned by a Rockingham who loved horses and art. When the horse won £2,000 for his owner in a race at York in 1759 who other than feted artist George Stubbs could have been commissioned to paint him?

Fortunately Whistlejacket’s fate at the hands of the removal men was to be transported first to another of the family’s homes and finally to the National Gallery where the painting still hangs today.

Touring the house with Dan Cruickshank was, I have to say, slightly disappointing. Though it was fantastic to finally drool over rooms I’d previously seen only in books or outlined in my imagination, I found Liz’s word pictures more vivid than his.

As we mulled over our impressions of the documentary, I found myself churning out a list of questions with Liz having to return to her student days to dredge up the answers.

Those who lived in the house for those golden college years seem to share the views of those interviewed for TV.

“The house was never treated badly by the students,” said Liz. “We all realised that we were somewhere special.

“Everyone who lived in the villages around the estate felt that they were part of one great family. And I suppose those of us who were lucky enough to have been at college there felt like that too.”

The house is now owned by an 85-year-old millionaire who sees the only way for it to have a real future is to open at least some of Wentworth Woodhouse to the public. Unless he does, perhaps it will remain the greatest house you’ve never heard of.