Castle Howard: Vanbrugh's Palace Redisplayed

Castle Howard in Yorkshire is one of a select group of country houses which must be seen as complete works of art.  Visitors to the great domed palace, set in the gentle landscape of the Howardian Hills north-east of York, may be bowled over by the panache of the architecture, or the beauty of the woods; by the dazzling quality of the pictures and furniture, or the charm of the porcelain.  Together they show why the English country house has so often been regarded as be a beacon of civilization and the arts of living well.  This year, a triumphant redisplay was unveiled. John has been to see it and discusses what he found with Clive.

Written into the stones of the house is the story of the extraordinary characters who created it. The 3rd Earl of Carlisle, who rose to become First Lord of the Treasury under William and Mary, loved theatre, music, poetry and gambling – all of which could be enjoyed in the company of fellow members of the Kit-Kat Club, such as John Vanbrugh, the tercentenary of whose death falls next year. In his 30s, Vanbrugh had served as a soldier, before bursting onto the London scene as a saucy playwright and wit.  Thanks to Carlisle, he entered architecture, sketching out – with amazing confidence – the design of an enormous house, whose centerpiece of which was (for the first and almost last time in British domestic architecture) a dome.  

Always spectacular, the house came, in the mid 20th century, to symbolize the desperate plight of country houses after the Second World War; as such it was one of the inspirations of Evelyn Waugh’s doom-laden Brideshead Revisited.  Nevertheless, it recovered from the doldrums of requisitioning and a fire that destroyed the dome, and now looks more splendid than ever.