Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, within the civil parish of Henderskelfe, located 15 miles north of York.

The Grade I listed building is a private residence and has been home to the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for over 300 years.

Origins & History

Castle Howard's creation began in 1699, with the start of design work by John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) for Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle (1669-1738). This construction began in 1701 and took more than 100 years to complete.

The site was that of the ruined Henderskelfe Castle, which had come to the Howard family after the marriage of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1536-1572) to Elizabeth Leyburne (1536-1567), widow of Thomas Dacre, 4th Baron Dacre (c.1527-1566).

In 1577, the third son of the 4th Duke of Norfolk, Lord William Howard (1563-1640), had married his half-sister Elizabeth Dacre (1564-1639), the youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Dacre. He brought with him the important estates of Henderskelfe and Naworth Castle.

The 3rd Earl of Carlisle was descended in the male line from Lord William Howard.

The house is surrounded by a large estate which, at the time of George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle (1802-1864), covered more than 13,000 acres (5,300 ha) and included the towns of Welburn, Bulmer, Slingsby, Terrington and Coneysthorpe.

The estate had its own railway station, Castle Howard Station, from 1845 to the 1950s.

While attending Girton College during the early Edwardian era, Lady Dorothy Georgiana Howard (1783-1858), the daughter of the ninth Earl and the "radical Countess" of Carlisle, befriended six of her fellow students, including future archaeologist Gisela Richter (1882-1972) and future Roman Catholic sainthood candidate Anna Abrikosova (1882-1936).

All six were invited by Lady Dorothy to Castle Howard as guests during the holidays.

After the ninth Earl's death in 1911, Castle Howard was inherited by his fifth son, Geoffrey Howard (1877-1935), with subsequent Earls having Naworth Castle as their northern country home.

In 1952, Castle Howard was opened to the public by its then-owner, George Howard, Baron Howard of Henderskelfe (1920-1984), the youngest son of Geoffrey Howard.

Its now owned by a Howard family company, Castle Howard Estate Limited, and managed by the Hon. Nicholas Howard, the second son of Lord Howard of Henderskelfe and his wife, Victoria.

In 2003, Channel 4's Time Team excavated the grounds for three days, searching for evidence of a lost local village to enable landscaping of the property.

Today

In addition to its most famous appearances in film as Brideshead in both the 1981 television serial and 2008 film adaptations of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, Castle Howard has been used as a backdrop for a number of other cinematic and television settings.

The castle has featured in the 1995 mini-series The Buccaneers. It was notable in Peter Ustinov's 1965 film Lady L and as the exterior set for Lady Lyndon's estate in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 film Barry Lyndon. It has even featured as the Kremlin, in Galton and Simpson's 1966 film The Spy with a Cold Nose. Rooms (Great Hall Entrance, Turquoise Drawing Room) were used for indoor scenes in Death Comes to Pemberley (TV series 2013).

The castle and its grounds were used as the setting for the Bollywood film Shaandar and the 2006 film Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.

The castle and mausoleum were used as the setting for the 2018 Arctic Monkeys video Four Out of Five.

The castle is used as the setting for Clyvedon House, the family seat of the Duke of Hastings, in the Netflix series Bridgerton.

Architecture

Vanbrugh's design evolved into a Baroque structure with two symmetrical wings projecting to either side of a north-south axis.

The crowning central dome was added to the design at a late stage, after building had begun. Construction began at the east end, with the East Wing constructed from 1701-03, the east end of the Garden Front from 1701-06, the Central Block (including dome) from 1703-06, and the west end of the Garden Front from 1707-09.

All are exuberantly decorated in Baroque style, with coronets, cherubs, urns and cyphers, with Roman Doric pilasters on the north front and Corinthian on the south.

Many interiors were decorated by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741).

The 3rd Earl of Carlisle first spoke to William Talman (1650-1719), a leading architect, but commissioned Vanbrugh, a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club, to design the building.

Castle Howard was that gentleman-dilettante's first foray into architecture, but he was assisted by Nicholas Hawksmoor (c.1661-1736).

The Earl then turned his energies to the surrounding garden and grounds. Although the complete design is shown in the third volume of Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus, published in 1725, the West Wing was not yet started when Vanbrugh died in 1726, despite his remonstration with the Earl.

The house remained incomplete on the death of the 3rd Earl in 1738, but the remaining construction finally started at the direction of the 4th Earl. However, Vanbrugh's design was not completed: the West Wing was built in a contrasting Palladian style to a design by the 3rd Earl's son-in-law, Sir Thomas Robinson. The new wing remained incomplete, with no first floor or roof, at the death of the 4th Earl in 1758; although a roof had been added, the interior remained undecorated by the death of Robinson in 1777. Rooms were completed stage by stage over the following decades, but the whole was not completed until 1811 under Charles Heathcote Tatham.

A large part of the house was destroyed by a fire which broke out on 9 November 1940.

One of the parts that burned was the central dome, which collapsed; potholes caused by debris are still visible on the ground. Many decorative paintings by Marco Ricci (1676-1730) were also lost.

Most of the rooms were restored and the house was opened to the public in 1952.

In the early 1980s, and thanks to the filming of the Brideshead Revisited series, some rooms affected by the aforementioned fire were redecorated with new murals.

Gardens

Castle Howard has extensive and diverse gardens. There is a large formal garden immediately behind the house. The house is prominently situated on a ridge and this was exploited to create an English landscape park, which opens out from the formal garden and merges with the park.

Two major garden buildings are set into this landscape: the Temple of the Four Winds at the end of the garden, and the Mausoleum in the park. There is also a lake on either side of the house.

There is a woodland garden, Ray Wood (formerly Wray Wood), and the walled garden contains decorative rose and flower gardens. The Ray Wood walls date from the 18th century and were restored in 2007. Further buildings outside the preserved gardens include Hawksmoor's Pyramid, restored in 2015, an obelisk, and several follies and eyecatchers in the form of fortifications which have been restored in recent years.

In nearby Pretty Wood, there are two more monuments, The Four Faces and a smaller pyramid by Hawksmoor. The grounds of Castle Howard are also used as part of at least two charity running races during the year.

Located on the estate, but operating separately from the house and gardens and run by an entirely independent charitable trust, is the 127 acres (51 ha) Yorkshire Arboretum. Originally created through the enthusiasm and partnership of George Howard (Lord Howard of Henderskelfe) and James Russell, over a period of eighteen years, from 1975 to 1992, it was opened to the public for the first time in 1999 and a new Visitor Centre opened in 2006.

The arboretum's extensive and important collection of 6,000 trees and plants from across the world is set in a beautiful landscape of parkland, lakes and ponds.

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