THE chain of events that led to the devastating Allerton Castle fire may not be known for at least another two weeks, it emerged today.

Firefighters are still probing the cause of Saturday's inferno, and whether it is linked to an earlier call to a chimney blaze just three hours beforehand.

Owen Hayward, operation support manager with North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, said brigade crews left the site late yesterday, to allow safety officials to assess the damage.

Mr Hayward confirmed a call was received at 11.23pm on Friday to a chimney fire in an occupied area of the stately home.

A crew attended and spent 50 minutes making the site safe and carrying out investigations for hotspots.

Mr Hayward said they were unable to find any further fire, but confirmed the same crew returned at 2.04am after a fresh call when the roof set ablaze.

He said: "We have done some preliminary investigations and it looks likely that the cause of the main blaze was a chimney fire. That's where the investigation is focused."

The fire chief said the probe could not continue until the area where the second fire started was made safe.

"It will probably be the weekend before we can continue and it will probably last one week or more."

Pressed whether the two call-outs were linked, he said: "We do not know whether they are linked at this stage.

"We have to finish the investigation before we can see if we could have prevented it."

Firefighters confirmed about 30 per cent of the stately home was destroyed. They said most of the roof and the historic dining room had been gutted, but most other rooms - including a substantial section of the Great Hall - had survived.

More than 100 firefighters tackled the blaze at its height, and Mr Hayward praised their efforts in preventing a worse outcome.

Updated: 10:21 Tuesday, January 25, 2005