Behind Closed Doors at Castle Howard.

It was another dull and overcast morning, 8C and foggy when I left home on route to Castle Howard, the fog was quite patchy and the sun was trying to break through which made the journey from home quite straight forward.

Although the house is still closed to the public as a ‘Friend of Castle Howard’ I was able to attend a ‘Behind Closed Doors Tour’ of the house hosted by Dr Chris Ridgway the Curator.

It was 10.15am when I arrived in the Stable Courtyard and made my way through the Ticket Office, after a short walk I arrived at the house for around 10.25am where I met 20 or so other guests. We were greeted by Matt and his team of chaperones who looked after us on our tour of the house. Mr Ridgway gave an informative introduction and outline of where we would be going during the morning.  

The house has been closed since Christmas and is currently being prepared ready for the new season which starts again on the 30th March. From the entrance we made our way up the Grand staircase onto the China Landing, the household and facilities teams were busily carrying our deep cleaning processes throughout the house including all the figurines along the Antique passage. Mr Ridgway explained that well over 8,500 hours are allocated to cleaning the house on a yearly basis, with a deep clean being carried out when all the Christmas decorations have been removed. Bearing this in mind there are over 300 rooms in the house and 59 staircases to climb and clean it is quite a major and essential annual task. They estimate that they hoover up over 2,000kg of dust each year.

From the Antique passage we made our way to the Great Hall, which this morning looked quite bare and empty since my last visit, the huge Christmas tree had been removed along with all the cascading lights and decorations which had been draped over the balcony during the Christmas period. From the Great hall we made our way up the stairs to the  High South part of the house. Here our party was divided into two groups, one to climb the narrow circular staircase up into the dome of the Great Hall whilst the other looked around some of the guest bedrooms which are normally out of bounds to the general visitor. I followed the Curator and half of our group up the narrow staircase into the dome. It is quite amazing how high up you are and although there is a walkway at least a metre wide around the side of the dome with a fancy ornate hand rail you still get the jitters when you look over the edge of the railing to the Great hall below. The top of the dome is some seventy feet above the floor.  Mr Ridgway explained that this part of the house was badly destroyed by a big fire in 1940 when the entire dome and ceiling collapsed during the fire as well as most of the Southern aspect of the house. There are eight huge windows around the dome which allow light to cascade in and light up the gallery space.  The views looking out of the windows at this height are quite spectacular unfortunately today the fog had descended and the view was virtually nil! After our tour of the dome we descended the spiral staircase which we had come up earlier to the first floor landing where we met the other half of our group, we then had a tour of two of the guests bedrooms whilst the other half of the group went up into the Dome. Helen one of our chaperones showed us around these two beautifully furnished guests rooms and explained the history about each room, both rooms were quite out of character with the decorations around the rest of the house, but very tastefully decorated with one with a feminine theme and the other more of a masculine theme. 

After about twenty minutes or so we met up with the other group and made our downstairs to the lower floor, from here we went through another door down stairs into the cellars underneath the house. Mr Ridgway gave quite a fascinating talk about the cellars and their previous uses and how they are looking to develop the space for future projects. After our tour of the cellars we went back up the stairs to ground level and into an annexed room off the main restaurant for a cup of tea and biscuits, followed by an excellent audio visual presentation by Mr Ridgway about the house, its construction from start to finish including the different family owners as well as an insight into how the house is maintained today. 

This has been an excellent tour from start to finish, Mr Ridgway’s knowledge about the house and surrounding area was incredible as were our chaperones, they certainly knew their subject and were able to put it across in an interesting and informative manner. A really good morning behind the closed doors at Castle Howard.