Castle Howard

Interesting facts

Building the house dragged on from 1701 to 1811, so it took more than a century and three generations of earls to finish.

The 1940 fire burned for about eight hours before firefighters had it under control, and some twenty paintings, including two Tintorettos, were lost.

Under the 7th Earl the estate stretched over more than 13,000 acres of North Yorkshire.

The Carlisle branch of the Howard family has owned the house for more than three centuries.

From 1845 until the 1950s the estate had its own railway station, named Castle Howard.

In 2009 an underwater heat-recovery system was laid in the lake, roughly halving the cost of heating the house.

The house was listed Grade I in January 1954, and its gardens were entered on the national register of historic parks in 1984.

Pellegrini's lost Fall of Phaeton ceiling over the great hall was painted afresh after the war by the Canadian artist Scott Medd.

Why it is worth it

Castle Howard is one of the grandest houses in England, a Baroque palace set on a ridge about 15 miles (24 km) north of York. It was commissioned by the 3rd Earl of Carlisle and designed from 1699 by John Vanbrugh, a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club who had never designed a building before, assisted by the far more practised Nicholas Hawksmoor. The dome crowning the centre was a late addition, made after work had already begun, and the house went up on the site of the former castle of Henderskelfe.

The house unfolds along a north–south axis with wings on either side, every front loaded with coronets, cherubs, urns and cyphers, Doric pilasters to the north and Corinthian to the garden. Vanbrugh's plan was never finished as he drew it: the west wing was built later in a cooler Palladian style by Sir Thomas Robinson, and the interiors were completed only in 1811. On 9 November 1940 a fire gutted the dome, the great hall and the east staterooms, destroying Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini's ceiling painting of the Fall of Phaeton; the dome was rebuilt in 1960–61 and the painting recreated by Scott Medd. Inside hang the collections of the Howards, including some 130 ancient sculptures and inscriptions gathered mostly before 1745, and a chapel remodelled by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

The landscape is as important as the house and is Grade I listed in its own right. Beyond the formal garden a vast park opens up, punctuated with garden buildings: the Temple of the Four Winds at the end of the garden, the Mausoleum out in the park, a pyramid, an obelisk and mock fortifications. There are lakes on both sides of the house, a woodland garden called Ray Wood and a walled rose garden. Castle Howard has starred as Brideshead in both the 1981 television series and the 2008 film of Evelyn Waugh's novel, and also appears in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and in Bridgerton. It has been open to the public since 1952 and is still the home of the Howard family.

Getting there

York, about 22 km away, is the nearest city. Teesside International Airport (MME) is about 55 km away in a straight line.

From the encyclopaedia

Castle Howard is an English country house in Henderskelfe, North Yorkshire, 15 miles (24 km) north of York. A private residence, it has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years. Castle Howard has been used as a filming location in several films and television shows, including in Granada Television's 1981 television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and in a 2008 film adaptation.

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Castle Howard

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia