Whilst in Dorset at Easter a friend and I took out Historic Houses membership. Sitting that evening in our Premier Inn room we excitedly researched what other interesting places were covered by our membership. The big one that stood out was Castle Howard. It’s a bit of a great old English houses bucket list item. It’s somewhere neither of us had been, though we both wanted to visit. And it’s expensive.
And so we planned a trip to North Yorkshire. We looked at dates and timings and booked a Premier Inn in nearby Pickering for the Saturday evening. Fast forward a couple of months and it was almost time for our trip. I was doing some last minute checking and discovered … that although Castle Howard is part of the Historic Houses scheme, members still have to pay to visit. Eek!
It seems it used to offer free entry to members but at some point had stopped. Whether it was still free at the point we originally researched it and it had only just changed or if, in our giddiness at planning the trip, we just hadn’t realised it wasn’t free to members, I don’t know. But we were committed. There are plenty of other things we could have done in North Yorkshire, but as we were looking forward to seeing Castle Howard and it was our main reason for this trip we just decided to suck it up and pay the entry fee.
Knowing this would probably be our one and only visit (and wanting to squeeze every last bit of value out of the 30 quid entry fee) we arranged to meet just before opening time.
Fortunately it was a gorgeous day so I knew we’d be able to make the most out of seeing the outside as well as the inside. I got there first and sat with a coffee and cheese scone in a nice little courtyard waiting for Paul to arrive. If it wasn’t costing so much I’d have happily sat there all day!
We decided to see the house first and then spend the afternoon exploring the grounds. The house is massive. It’s actually one of the largest country houses in the UK with 145 rooms. Not all are open to the public of course. The whole estate covers 8,800 acres, with a lot of it being farmland and woodland. The gardens are still pretty big though.
It’s a bit of a trek from the entrance and the courtyard coffee shop so we hopped on a little red tractor-pulled train (free!) for the journey up to the lake and the front of the house.
On the lawn in front of the huge imposing grey stone building was a large swirly, lumpy, goldish chunk of metal. This was our introduction to a summer exhibition of Turner Award winning artist Tony Cragg. His works were found throughout the castle and grounds and although some seemed incongruous, most actually worked quite well in the large spaces.
I’d never heard of him, but he’s actually really big in the sculpture world, having been exhibiting in major museums around the world for over 50 years and won loads of top prizes.
My description of the first work we saw really doesn’t do it justice. But then I’m obviously not an art critic. Here’s what the Castle Howard website has to say about his work.
The artworks on display celebrated Cragg’s rich imagination, showing the diverse ways and materials he uses to make sculpture. The artworks were surprising, hybrid forms that challenged our thoughts and emotions.
Here’s another one. This one, standing by the lake, could be seen from in front of the house.
As soon as we entered the house we knew we were going to love it. Here are some of the rooms we saw.
A few of the Howards
The family line fascinated me as I spotted lots of links to other places I’ve visited, authors I’ve read, historical incidents that intrigue me, and causes I would have supported had I been alive.
The Howard family associated with Castle Howard have been around for over 450 years. This is when descendants of the Duke of Norfolk moved into Yorkshire and the site where the castle now stands. The house we see today wasn’t built until several generations later however. By this time the title ‘Earl of Carlisle’ had been created and also passed down a few generations.
The 4th Earl did a couple of Grand Tours of the continent and, as was the way then, collected lots of antiquities which are displayed in the house. His first wife died, as did his children. His second wife, and mother of his second lot of children, was Isabella Bryon. She just happened to be great-aunt to the poet, Lord Byron. The Byron family have connections with Clayton Hall which is very local to me. From her antics following her husband’s death it seems she was just as much a character as her great-nephew!
The 6th Earl married Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, linking Castle Howard with Chatsworth. Georgiana is an interesting character in her own right and the film, ‘The Duchess’, is based on her life.
Georgiana’s son George, who became the 7th Earl, spent a year in North America and after witnessing slavery there, spent the rest of his life as a committed Abolitionist. He wrote the preface to Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The 9th Earl was involved in the arts and counted William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones amongst his friends. His wife, Rosalind, sounds like a formidable woman. She had 11 children and managed the estate so her husband was free to pursue his art. She still found time to be a campaigner for both the Temperance and Suffragist movements.
These days Castle Howard is run as a private company, though the directors are still family members.
Just after visiting I watched a four-part Channel 4 documentary on the house – one episode for each season. The documentary featured the current owners and showed what they are doing to restore and maintain the house and its grounds, and also what they are doing to raise the funds to pay for all of this. After watching I understood the steep entrance price!
Part of house was pretty much destroyed by a fire in 1940. Over 80 years later and the costly restorations are still ongoing. The dome with its underside covered with a mural painted by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini collapsed and was only restored (along with a reproduction of his ‘The Fall of Phaeton’ mural) in 1961. Much of the East Wing remains as a shell.
We were able to see a few of ‘better’ rooms in the shell where renovations have been started. This one has been restored back to the brick and is used to display information about the fire and restoration. There’s also one with more of Tony Cragg’s sculptures.
A few of the completely restored rooms had their renovations paid for in a rather novel way. Castle Howard has been associated with Evelyn Waugh’s book, Brideshead Revisited, for the past 40 years. Granada Studios turned the book into a popular TV series in 1981 and filmed most of it at Castle Howard. The TV company paid to renovate some of the rooms they wanted to use. In 2008, Castle Howard became Brideshead once again. This time it was Miramax making a film version of the book. And guess what? They also paid to renovate some of the rooms they wanted to use.
By the time we’d finished seeing the house we were ready for lunch. Now being such a posh and popular place, and with all that farmland as part of the estate, we hadn’t brought food with us as we were looking forward to treating ourselves to a lovely lunch in the restaurant.
It didn’t happen.
The restaurant was more canteen style where you queue at the counter to buy your food. None of it looked very appetising. The only vegetarian dish was a curry that was so stodgy I think they must have been selling it by the slice. There were a few bowls of salad which looked good, but they were in the middle of the room sitting, completely uncovered, on a pedestal just below head height. So exactly where everyone was breathing on them. And it was busy. So that was a lot breathing.
Instead we wandered off to a pizza place by the lake. They were advertising three types of pizza, but only had one type available. Fortunately it was a Neapolitan and so I could eat it. It was freshly made and actually tasted really really good. We sat outside by the lake to eat it, watching a little tourist boat coming and going.
Although the pizza was good, it wasn’t the treat we had been hoping for. It seemed like the family, who are creative with their ways of bringing in money, were really missing out on the most obvious earner.
But that was the only downer of the day, and it was only a minor one. So all was good. We ate our pizza and then checked out the boat we had been watching.
It was just coming back in as we got to the little jetty. We could go round the lake for £5 each. The man running the boat told us the trip lasted about half an hour which, having watched it come and go, we were a bit incredulous at. But it seemed like a nice thing to do and we’d saved money by just having pizza for lunch, so we decided to hop aboard.
It definitely wasn’t half an hour. More like 15 minutes. But the guide was full of information and we got some good views of the house. And it was nice just being out on the water on such a lovely day. So we considered worth it.
Once back on land, we bought ice creams and set off to explore the grounds. There are lots of of statues and sculptures (not the Tony Cragg ones this time) along the paths and some good viewpoints.
And that was pretty much our day at Castle Howard done. It completely lived up to our expectations (apart from the lunch) and we did end up feeling we’d got our money’s worth. We got so lucky with the weather as well.
I have so many photos as you can no doubt tell, but I have some that I’ve not shared here. I loved the particular rooms they’re of so much that I think they deserve a post of their own. So watch this space.
Is Castle Howard somewhere you’d like to visit? Have you already been? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Books to read that are relevant to your visit
- Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher-Stowe
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Like this? Read these next:
- Exploring Wharram Percy: Yorkshire’s village of the living dead
- An Afternoon at the Russell-Cotes Museum
- A Wintry Look at the RHS Garden Bridgewater
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