Castle Howard

 Walk around the estate of the magnificent Castle Howard in this walk. Hardly any climbing required and the walk which will take about 2 hours and leave you spare time to explore the castle and gardens. 

 Castle Howard

  Getting There From Middlesbrough follow the A172 to Stokesley and then follow the B1257 to via Great Broughton to Helmsley. Follow the A170 out of Helmsley and ignore the road going to Sutton Bank. Instead join the B1257 again and follow this until you reach the right turning for Castle Howard. Parking is at the cross roads and can be found on the right near the cross road junction.

 Route of the Castle Howard walk

 The Walk

 From the parking space turn left and then turn right at the crossroads, to head for Coneysthorpe. Walk through the village and look for a white gate to your right just after a Slow sign in the road. 

 White gate

 Go through the gate and head along the track.  

 Follow the track

 

When you come to a T junction on the track follow the left path to Bog Hall. 

Sign to Bog Hall 

You should reach a farm shortly. Follow the path to the left of the farmhouses. 

 Take left path at farmhouses

 Follow the Welburn and CW signs. This track follows through a wood and over a bridge, and you should get a good view of the Mausoleum in the

distance.

 

 

 View of the mausoleum

 At the next farm buidlings take the right turning onto Centenary Way which

is signposted. 

 Centenary Way signpost

 Follow the metalled road and you will see the Pyramid coming into view. As

you get closer look for a right turning signposted "Coneysthorpe". 

 The Pyramid

 Follow this path through a cornfield until you reach an elevated bridge.

 

 

                                                 Bridge and view of the Mausoleum

 Once on bridge you will have views of Castle Howard to your left, the

Mausoleum to your right and ahead to your left the Temple of the Four Winds.

 

 the Temple of the Four Winds

 

 Head onto the field bearing left towards the Temple of the Four Winds. This

path goes over the ridge, then turns left to the park wall. Follow the wall as it bends left and go through a kissing gate beside a white gate and continue along the track. After about 50 yards, beyond a gate on your left, go left off

the track on a grassy path. 

 Follow this keeping parallel to the estate wall to another track. Cross the track, then bear half left to reach another track. Turn right here and follow this track back to the white gate in Coneysthorpe. Remember if you lose your way, there is a decent GPS signal here. You can now drive to Castle Howard and explore the buildings and gardens.

  

 

 

  

 Castle Howard grounds and gardens

 

 Castle Howard  Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, 15 miles (24 km) north of York. It is a private residence, the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years.

Castle Howard is not a true castle, but this term is also used for English country houses erected on the site of a former military castle.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.Building of Castle Howard began in 1699 and took over 100 years to complete 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.The house is surrounded by a large estate which, at the time of the 7th Earl of Carlisle, covered over 13,000 acres (5,300 ha) and included the villages of Welburn, Bulmer, Slingsby, Terrington and Coneysthorpe. The estate was served by its own railway station, Castle Howard, from 1845 to the 1950s.After the death of the 9th Earl in 1911, Castle Howard was inherited by his younger son Geoffrey, with later earls having Naworth Castle as their northern country house. In 1952, the house was opened to the public by the then owner, George Howard, Baron Howard of Henderskelfe. It is currently owned by his son, the Honourable Simon Howard, who grew up at the castle.In 2003, the grounds were excavated over three days by Channel 4's Time Team, searching for evidence of a local village lost to allow for the landscaping of the estate. The 3rd Earl of Carlisle first spoke to William Talman, 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.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. 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 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

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 complete until 1811.A large part of the house was destroyed by a fire which broke out on 9 November 1940. 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 have been 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.According to figures released by the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, nearly 220,000 people visited Castle Howard in 2010.In 2009 an underwater ground-source heat recovery system was installed under the castle's lake that halved the heating bill.