Castle Howard

A great day out visiting this stately home between York and Scarborough. This shot is from the formal garden at the front of the house and also shows the Atlas fountain and the lead sculpture of the Dancing Faun.

Castle Howard is still a private residence, the home of the Howard family for more than 300 years.

It is familiar to television and film audiences as the fictional "Brideshead", both in Granada Television's 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and a two-hour 2008 remake for cinema.

Today, it is part of the Treasure Houses of England group of heritage houses.

Castle Howard was built between 1699 and 1712 to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle. The site was that of the ruined Henderskelfe Castle, which had come into the Howard family in 1566 through the marriage to Lord Dacre's widow of Thomas, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

A large part of the house was destroyed by a fire which broke out on 9 November 1940 - amazingly and coincidentally that is the day I was born!!
The dome, the central hall, the dining room and the state rooms on the east side were entirely destroyed. Paintings depicting the Fall of Phaeton by Antonio Pellegrini were also damaged. In total, twenty pictures (including two Tintorettos and several valuable mirrors) were lost. The fire took the Malton and York Fire Brigades eight hours to bring under control.
Some of the devastated rooms were restored over the following decades. In 1960–61 the dome was rebuilt and in the following couple of years, Pellegrini's Fall of Phaeton was recreated on the underside of the dome.

Some were superficially restored for the 2008 filming, and now house an exhibition. The East Wing remains a shell, although it has been restored externally. Castle Howard is one of the largest country houses in England, with a total of 145 rooms.