Brideshead Revived

There are fewer finer approaches to a stately home than to Castle Howard, 15 miles from York. The road runs in and out of gatehouses for a mile and a half before it reaches Sir John Vanbrugh’s great Baroque triumph, its golden cupola lantern glinting in the sun.

For over 300 years, Castle Howard has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family. It was begun in 1699 when Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, a member of the fashionable Kit Cat Club, asked the dramatist John Vanbrugh to design him a new house.

Undeterred by this, his first architectural commission, Vanbrugh, working with Nicholas Hawksmoor, began work on Carlisle’s new house. The domed central block – the first of its kind