Brideshead Revisited filming location, Castle Howard, Yorkshire

 

Every summer I read my second favourite novel Brideshead Revisited based on Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. It's about Captain Charles Ryder who is in the army in the Second World War. Through the night the troop travel to a stately home which has been seconded for the war effort. When he wakes he’s surprised to find it's a spectacular home that deeply affected his earlier years. The story takes you back to the time when Charles meets a man at university and gets invited back to his home. Home is Brideshead, the huge palatial stately home of the Flyte family. The reader is taken back to the 1920s and shows how for 20+ years Charles was drawn into and intoxicated by the colourful family and their glamorous life.

 

A lavish 11 episode television serial of the book was released in 1981 made and here I am at Castle Howard in the Yorkshire countryside where it was filmed. This 145-room treasure trove of a house was “Brideshead” in the serial. Parking the motor home in grounds was free but getting into the grounds and house wasn't. I had some beans on toast and then walked around the place, surveying the walls and fences to see if I gain entry for free. I have a retractable dog lead and thought I would clamber over the fence and if someone saw me I’d say I was chasing my lost dog who’d escaped.

 

This plan did not work. A country road runs by the place and people respectfully drive slowly however some unmarked police cars suddenly came into view and zoomed by. Sirens had been thrown on the roofs and each cop was dressed into a bullet proof vest. This furore brought a security man out of a sentry box and I looked conspicuous all of a sudden. In the end I had to pay £19.50 for a ticket to enter the gardens and house. Firstly I spent about half an hour surveying the perimeter of the vast estate’s grounds and now know the weak points to I never have to pay again - and getting into the house itself is easy (for £4.22 I’ll let you know.)

 

It was mildly poignant for me to see some filming locations. The television serial was faithful to the novel and I've watched it so many times I couldn't quite believe I was stood where some of the filming was done. I feel like I know the Flyte family and that house. The last time I'd visited was with my mum. The cancer was weakening her legs and we'd stopped going on coach holidays as she feared she wouldn't be able to mount the steps into the coach. We were sat on a bench when a coach arrived and after everyone had got off I asked the driver if my mum could try to get up the steps and into the body of the coach (she did.) I looked at the very bench we'd sat on to have ice creams and touched the photos of her in my pocket.

 

I had a stroll around the expansive gardens and ate an apple by the lake observing this quintessentially English backdrop. It looked different early one morning in November 1940. A schoolgirl was lighting a fire but lost control of it and it swept through the house. The schoolgirl was from Queen Margaret’s School which had been evacuated there in the war and suddenly a mass of the girls were moving paintings, books, ornaments, tapestries and rugs onto the lawns. The central hall, dining room and state rooms were ruined. Worst of all the dome imploded and the ceiling decorated by Venetian painter Antonio Pellegrini's was lost. A third of the building was left open to the skies.

 

As I walked round I noticed a dozen petite doll-like Oriental girls were taking selfies. A couple I got chatting to a couple near the fountain and they said a Taiwanese pop star had got married there and it was the only reason for the their visit. The place has also been the filming location for other productions, the latest being Victoria (where the young Victoria learns she's the new Queen.) I can only see this as Brideshead though.

 

It’s ironic that Brideshead Revisited was filmed here as the novelist Evelyn Waugh stayed here once. He was giving a speech at Ampleforth (a very posh Catholic school) twelve miles away and he stayed here for a few days. I can only think he was so suffused with its opulence, splendour, domes, drama and divinity that he held it in his mind when he wrote the novel. The fictional Flyte family are a different matter though and it’s thought they were based on the Clifton family who lived in Lytham Hall in Lancashire (see last photo.)

 

Anyway, here’re some photographs of some filming locations - then and now.

 

 

The first time Sebastian should Charles where he lives...

 

Entering the chapel...

 

 

 

Charles paints the mural here...

 

 

 

 

Charles and Julia down by the fountain...

 

 

 

Lord Marchmaine comes home to die...

 

 

The actors meet up...

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