England

North Yorkshire

Coneysthorpe

54.132111

-0.91083

1700

1726

Fully Extant

Grade I

Grade I

No

C. I, pls. 63-71, 1715. C. III, pls. 5, 6, 1725.

Vol. I, p. 142, 1852.

XV, 234, 1904. LXI, 884 plan, 948, 1005 [Pictures], 1022, 1043 [Pictures], 1927. LXII, 200 [Outworks], 230 [Outworks], 1927. CXIII, 276 plan, 1953.

Vol. V, 1822.

Yes

Yes

01653-648-444

01653-648-529

HHA/Christie's Garden of the Year Award 2011.

Individual / Family Trust

Private Home

Castle Howard is jointly owned by the four sons of the late Baron Howard of Henderskelfe, The Hon Henry, Nicholas, Simon and Anthony Howard, via Castle Howard Estate Ltd.

Hon. Simon Howard; Howard family here since 1577.

Earl of Carlisle. SEATED AT HENDERSKELFE: Greystoke family, 15th century. Lord Thomas Dacre, 1488-1525; Dacre family here until 1577.

The Old Castle of Henderskelfe was rebuilt in 1683, but gutted by fire 10 years later and replaced by the current house.

Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle

After the burning of an earlier house, the "Old Castle of Henderskelfe," the young 3rd Earl of Carlisle, recently appointed First Lord of the Treasury, was determined to build a house befitting his newly-elevated status. In 1698 the Earl commissioned William Talman to build him a new house; however, the two soon disagreed and Talman, who had a reputation for being difficult, was dismissed. The following year the Earl made the surprising choice of John Vanbrugh as the architect for his new house (the finished product cost the immense sum of £78,000, worth approximately £10 million in inflation-adjusted 2010 values, using the retail price index). Vanbrugh was then primarily a playwright who had never designed a house (both Lord Carlisle and Vanbrugh were members of the Kit-Cat Club, which is very likely where their friendship developed). Vanbrugh's grand ideas, ably assisted by Nicholas Hawksmoor and enthusiastically backed by his patron and client, created one of the greatest houses of the 18th century. The great dome, which soars 80 feet, was the first in a private house in Britain. The scagliola in the Great Hall was one of the earliest examples in England of this mixture of marble chips and hard plaster. Frederick, the 5th Earl, commissioned C.H. Tatham in 1805 to finish the interior of the West Wing, the Chapel, and the Museum Room. Originally planned as a columned Dining Hall, the Chapel has a ceiling based on the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. George, the 9th Earl, was a painter in his own right (in the Pre-Raphaelite style); his friend Edward Burne-Jones designed stained glass windows for the Chapel, which were executed by William Morris. During World War II the House was occupied by a girls' school. In 1940 a fire engulfed Castle Howard, gutting the entire east and central sections of the south front and destroying the dome. Many important interiors, including the Garden Hall and the High Saloon were lost. The great dome was restored in 1960 by George Howard, who also commissioned the Canadian artist Scott Medd to restore Pellegrini's fresco of Phaeton falling from his father's chariot. In 1982 the artist Felix Kelly completed murals in the Garden Room; the murals were meant to evoke Claudian vistas as seen through "windows," the latter of which were designed by the architect Julian Bicknell. The murals (commissioned by his close friend George Howard, then Chairman of the BBC) were used in the TV mini-series "Brideshead Revisited" (passed off as the work of Charles Ryder, played by Jeremy Irons), which was famously filmed at Castle Howard. The 2008 motion picture of "Brideshead Revisited," starring Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, was also filmed at Castle Howard. Sanssouci, the Potsdam complex begun as the summer palace of Frederick the Great in the 1740s, includes New Palace, a 1760s building in the Prussian Baroque style that was clearly influenced in its design by Castle Howard. George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle, Knight of the Garter, Privy Councillor, Member of Parliament and Viceroy of Ireland, was also, a bit surprisingly, a passionate lover of poetry (he exchanged sonnets with William Wordsworth). In 1826 the Earl famously accompanied his uncle, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, to Russia for the lavish coronation of Tsar Nicholas I. The Earl is buried in Hawksmoor’s sublime mausoleum at Castle Howard. In 1869-70 the Carlisle Memorial Column was erected on the Castle Howard Estate to the memory of the 7th Earl (see the “Garden, Park, Follies and Outbuildings” section for more information on the Carlisle Memorial Column).

Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle (1694-1758), formed an outstanding collection of 170 classical and post-classical gems (intaglios and cameos) at Castle Howard between 1739 and 1758, the majority of which were purchased by the British Museum in 1890. The collecting of antique gems in Britain reached such an intense and competitive level in the 18th century that the French gem expert P.J. Mariette, writing in "Traité des Pierres Gravées" in the 1750s, said "nowhere is more love shown for classical gems" [than in England]. The current collection at Castle Howard contains notable paintings, including the famous Holbein portraits of Henry VIII and the Duke of Norfolk. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s "Cardinal dal Pozzo" was sold by negotiation to The National Gallery of Scotland 1986-87 for £3 million. A sale of various contents of Castle Howard was sold at auction Nov 11-13, 1991 by Sotheby's. Michelangelo's "Mourning Woman" drawing was sold for £5,943,500 at Sotheby’s in London, Jul 11, 2001. Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Portrait of Omai" was sold Nov 29, 2001 at Sotheby's for £10,343,500 (although its export was refused and it was subsequently bought by Tate Britain for £12.5 million in Mar 2003). One of Canaletto's masterpieces, "Bacino di San Marco, Venice," purchased by the 4th Earl of Carlisle, has been in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 1939, where it is considered among the finest Canalettos in America. A fine pair of Canalettos of the views of the Piazzo San Marco and the Piazzetta, also purchased by the 4th Earl, are today in the collection of The National Gallery of Art, Washington. An unusual circa 1705 walnut bureau cabinet featuring 5 carved and gilded figures on the cornice, formerly in the collection at Castle Howard, is today in The Burrell Collection, Glasgow. The bedroom passage leading to Lady Georgiana's bedroom is hung with a fine collection of 18th century prints of Raphael's decorations for the Vatican Loggia, purchased by the 6th Earl of Carlisle in 1827.

Castle Howard is generally considered to be the finest private residence in Yorkshire and the first great British house of the 18th century. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd called the approach to Castle Howard "probably the most dramatic of all the great houses of England and Wales." Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, writing in "British Architects and Craftsmen," considered Hawksmoor's Mausoleum and Bridge at Castle Howard to be "greater works of art than many of our Cathedrals. They belong to the class of Landscape buildings, and probably of their kind, they are as beautiful as anything in Europe." Horace Walpole, writing in the 18th century on Castle Howard: "Nobody had informed me at one view I should see a palace, a town, a fortified city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids, the noblest lawn in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive; in short, I have seen gigantic places before, but never a sublime one."

Castle Howard sits in an Estate of 10,000 acres, of which 1,000 are devoted to gardens and follies, including the Temple of the Four Winds, the building in England which has the most in common with the built architecture of Palladio. Gervase Jackson-Stops believed that the follies in the gardens were deliberately Greek and Egyptian in design to complement Vanbrugh’s Roman Temple of the Four Winds – thus representing the three great civilizations of the past. The Mausoleum, which Horace Walpole famously quipped was so beautiful it would tempt one to be buried alive, is one of the most important buildings of its kind in Britain. The Mausoleum received a £1 million grant from English Heritage in 1979 to prevent its collapse, yet it still remains on the English Heritage List of Buildings at Risk. On Bulmer Hill stands the Carlisle Memorial Column, erected 1869-70 by public subscription and dedicated to the memory of George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle. The 120-foot stone tower is topped by an ornamental Greek brazier, or urn, with leaping copper flames. By 2002 the original cast iron beacon had been lost and a £60,000 project was begun to reproduce the beacon. The result was a 15-foot-high cast iron structure with a wrought iron basket and braces and gilded copper flames. The beacon weighs approximately four tons and sits on a ten-foot-tall Greek tripod. The column is inscribed: "AD MDCCCLXIX: IN PRIVATE LIFE WAS LOVED / BY ALL WHO KNEW HIM / BY HIS PUBLIC CONDUCT / WON the RESPECT of his COUNTRY / and LEFT THE BRIGHT EXAMPLE / OF A TRVE PATRIOT / AND EARNEST CHRISTIAN / VIIth EARL of CARLISLE." The famous Atlas Fountain was acquired by the 7th Earl at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and installed in the center of the South Parterre by W.A. Nesfield.

C.H. Tatham finished the interior of the Chapel in 1805. Originally planned as a columned Dining Hall, the Chapel has a ceiling based on the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. Edward Burne-Jones designed the stained glass windows, which were executed by William Morris.

"Lady L" (1965). "The Spy With a Cold Nose" (1966). "Twelfth Night" (1974 - TV production). "Barry Lyndon" (1975). “Brideshead Revisited” (1981 - TV mini series, as Brideshead). "The Buccaneers" (1995 - TV mini series, as Longlands, home of the Duke and Duchess of Trevenick). "Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island" (1999 - TV series). "Antiques Roadshow" (1999 - TV series, 2 episodes). "Bargain Hunt" (2000-07? - TV game show series). "Casanova" (2002 - TV production). "Time Team" (2003 - TV documentary series, episode 10.11). "Britain's Finest" (2003 - TV documentary series). "Castle in the Country" (2005 - TV BBC documentary, series 2). "Revisiting Brideshead" (2005 - TV documentary on the TV series “Brideshead Revisited” [1981], especially in the segment "Castle Howard"). "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" (2006 - as Castle Carlisle/Carlyle exteriors). "Flyboys" (2006). "The Great Garden Detectives" (2007 - TV series). "Brideshead Revisited" (2008 - theatrical movie, as Brideshead). "Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour of Europe" (2009 - TV mini series).