The estate is said to have gained its unusual name from its early nineteenth-century owner, the Hon. Frederick West a son of Lord de la Warr, who had travelled in Spain. Here, ‘Quinta’ refers to a domestic residence. West – who also owned the Ruthin Castle Estate that he had inherited through his wife Maria, the co-heiress of the Myddelton family of Chirk Castle – adorned the grounds of his house with a replica of Stonehenge of reduced scale, known as The Temple. He appears to have bought the property soon after 1822 although there is known to have been a significant house on the site in 1810. West eventually moved to Ruthin, renting The Quinta to Joseph Venables who, himself, later went to live at Oakhurst.

West’s house, which was described as ‘a picturesque castellated mansion’, was later demolished and rebuilt after his death, in 1852, by Thomas Barnes (1812–1897) of Farnworth, Lancashire, MP for Bolton. He had purchased the estate in 1855. His father, James Rothwell Barnes, had been a Bolton merchant and it was his business that Thomas and his elder brother, George, developed, creating one of the largest cotton-spinning firms in Lancashire. A Liberal, a Congregationalist and supporter of the Free Trade movement, he gave Farnworth a public park in 1864 and it was opened by William Gladstone who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

At The Quinta, he and his wife rebuilt the house in 1856–8 in a tough gothic style. The main show-front faces east across the park towards its lakes and has a three-bay centre, flanked by broad gabled-wings – on the right there is a first-floor oriel window. Originally the polygonal tower to the left was crowned by a spire and the roofline was further enlivened by a high mansard roof that rose up from a rectangular, projecting porch tower on the northern entrance front. Both spire and mansard seem to have been removed in the mid twentieth century and now only their sad stumps remain.