Good housekeeping

Unseen amid the tranquillity of the domed and distant Castle Howard in its magnificent setting of the Howardian Hills is the hustle and bustle of a business so big that it is akin to a mini-economy.

And it is growing all the time.

The dynamism that drives this 10,000 acre estate near Malton is an age away from the 1960s when cash-starved owners of stately homes withered into oblivion, powered only by a dying tradition of noblesse oblige and a sense of outrage that the world had passed their ancient glories by.

Yes, there are 200,000 visitors each year to that elegant 18th century building and its myriad art treasures and their presence makes a huge contribution to its renovation and restoration, but that is only part of the business picture.

Years ago, the Hon Simon Howard, who lives in that paradise with his wife, Rebecca, and their five year-old twins, Merlin and Octavia, recognised a simple formula.

His amazing inheritance, designed for his distant relative, the 3rd Earl of Carlisle by 18th century dramatist John Vanbrugh, also included a passionate mission to restore the great house which was seemingly destroyed beyond repair in a great fire of 1940.

The formula? Such a mammoth task needs plenty of money. (Routine maintenance of the house and grounds such as keeping the lawns cut, the lightbulbs changed, the windows cleaned, the buildings heated, cost £800,000 a year alone) Business generates money. So create profitable businesses.

So now Castle Howard is also more than a film-maker's dream - remember Brideshead Revisited? - or the lift-off point for the balloon festival. Or a magnificent setting for star-billed concerts - who can ever forget the sun-burnished dome amid the bray of jazz trumpets as Shirley Bassey belted out Goldfinger?

It is a shopping centre, a peerless arboretum, a plant centre, a caravan holiday park, an organic farm, a forestry contracting service and a thriving business park.

It employs directly 110 people plus a further 140 staff during the house opening season.

At the same time, it preserves an archetypal rural village with two little schools and 186 homes ranging from flats, cottages and family houses to "gentlemen's residences". There's a village hall, a little chapel, a reading room (and to complete the idyll, mooring rights on the River Derwent).

The 14 commercial lets include workshops, livery businesses, a forge and garages. But this is not an operation that can survive in aspic, or thrive in isolation.

Like any venture it must reach out beyond its borders to customers and to other businesses.

You can see that entrepreneurial spirit in the Stable Courtgyard with its chocolatiere, its Courtyard cafe and its farm shop selling its own locally-grown produce, including beef and game from the estate.

You can sense it at the plant centre where expert horticulturalists advise customers about the products grown under an acre of glass and plastic.

There is evidence of it among the 160 caravan pitches on the 13-acre Lakeside Holiday Park.

Adapt and survive has now evolved into innovate and thrive.

That is why there are exciting plans being formulated by The Castle Howard Estate Ltd, of which the Hon Simon is chairman and his brother, the Hon Nicholas, is director.

One of those plans, as reported exclusively in last Wednesday's Press, is the notion of a hotel "of national or even international renown" developed in one of the wings in the elegant Gate House, attracting 50 jobs and generating yet more cash for vital repair and maintenance on the Castle Howard estate.

A detailed feasibility study is being drawn up this month by the Castle Howard Board as well as Harrison Developments of Malton and the Knightsbridge-based Capital Hotels Group.

The vision is of a luxury hotel in what was an old now-disused inn, called the Temperance Hotel, where in the late 19th century the ninth Countess of Carlisle would accommodate women and children from the industrial belt of the North to help them to escape "urban drudgery".

Nearby disused farm buildings could also be transformed into bedrooms If the three organisations commit themselves to the substantial multi-million pound investment, they will formulate a planning application which will take into account the views of Ryedale District Council planners and English Heritage, especially looking at the impact on the beautiful landscape.

Given planning consent, building could begin next year and be ready for first customers by 2009.

Now comes a new plan - to tackle a shortage of craftspeople with traditional building skills.

The aim is to create a world-class Yorkshire and Humber Heritage Skills Academy at Castle Howard - a vocational training centre where whole new generations of experts in conserving ancient buildings can be shaped and honed.

The plan, in partnership with York College and the Construction Industry Training Board, foresees the conversion of farm buildings on the estate where students can get "hands-on" experience linked to Castle Howard's restoration programme.

Now the funding is being explored for the Academy which will support the education and training of a wide range of groups, including 14 to 16 year olds still at school, apprentices and learners at York College and professionals from both within the skills sector and outside who need upskilling.

Simon Howard sees the project as another way of reaching out to the business community in York and North Yorkshire, an association from which everyone will benefit.

He wants to destroy the notion of the Howards as "aloof family on a hill".

He says: "The training would be one example of how as a local training provider we can benefit wider Yorkshire."

Setting up the business infrastructure of the Castle Howard Estate Limited has required a whole new way of thinking.

Where vital decisions were once autocratic, now they are much more devolved.

Duncan Peake, Castle Howard's estates manager, says: "Now our strategy from the top sets objectives for each department head who has to prepare a business plan to support it. Once approved by the board, they are empowered.

"My role is to co-ordinate and support managers. It is not to control. We delegate decisions to good people who are experts in their field."