STEPHEN LEWIS gauges the extent of the work that will need to be done to restore fire-ravaged Allerton Castle - and looks back at the great house's history.

GERALD Rolph cuts a forlorn figure as he stands in the Great Hall at Allerton Castle. The hall itself is largely undamaged: but the devastation wreaked by the fire which raged through the north side of the building early on Saturday is plainly visible beyond the red-and-white fire and rescue tape which seals off the entrance to the ruined Dining Room.

The castle's north-facing back entrance, too, is gutted by fire and filled with scaffolding put up in an attempt to stop a heavy cast-iron water tank on the floor above crashing through and causing yet more damage. Upstairs, in one of the grand bedrooms, daylight can be seen through the blackened roof beams.

A tragedy is how Dr Rolph describes it. Since buying the Grade I listed castle in 1983, the American electronics tycoon has dedicated himself to the task of restoring the building to its full Victorian Gothic splendour.

When he bought the castle, Dr Rolph - who described himself as a conservationist dedicated to preserving world heritage because "America is so young that its heritage is almost non-existent" - pledged to restore the 80 room mansion "in the interests of the community".

He has never said just how much he has spent on Allerton, but it must run to many millions. As long ago as 1993 he admitted: "It's an awful lot. It often seems like a bottomless pit of money."

Even up until the fire, the restoration was an ongoing project. "The Restoration Continues" says the latest visitors guide to Allerton Castle produced for the new 2005 season. How desperately ironic that now seems.

The extent of the fire damage is as yet difficult to ascertain. Some parts of the building on the north side are still too dangerous to enter. Others, especially to the south, remain virtually untouched by the fire.

Dr Rolph leads me through the Great Hall, picking past electricity cables, fire and rescue tape and camera cables belonging to a TV crew, and into the exquisite drawing room with its magnificent plaster ceiling and Venetian chandelier. The finest such chandelier in Europe, he says.

The room has been spared - as has the ballroom, once described by the late Patrick Nuttgens as the restored stately home's "piece de resistance" with its "dark blue walls, velvet curtains with great swags and white fan vaulting".

Much of the library and indeed most of the south-facing front of the house has also been saved, but with acrid smoke lingering everywhere, it is becoming all-too-apparent what a major job restoring the castle to its full glory will be.

The damage is "quite significant", admits engineer Chris Whapples of Harrogate firm Hill Cannon. Many of the inside walls had timber embedded in them, which caught fire, causing considerable damage. With parts of the roof damaged, chimney stacks have been left vulnerable and in danger of collapse.

Much of the wooden flooring inside has been covered with "crash decking" so that anything falling from the upper walls or ceiling will not further damage the floor. But most worrying of all is the cast-iron water tank, which must weight a couple of tons, Chris says.

The engineers' top priority is to stabilise this before it can do more damage.

The original idea had been to use a crane, but that had to be abandoned because of fears there were cellars beneath the grass at the north side of the house where a crane would have to stand.

Now engineers are laboriously building a 'bridge' out above the tank, so they can dismantle it.

"We have to build up from outside the building," Chris says. "The floors inside are so unstable we cannot work off them. The roof timbers caught fire, collapsed on to the floor, and the floor caught fire as well."

Despite the difficulties, hopes are that the worst of the damage can be stabilised by the end of the week. Then, the main job will be to assess the full extent of the damage. "At the moment, we can only assess the damage in areas that we can physically see," Chris says. "There are areas we cannot go into because it is too dangerous."

Dr Rolph has no doubt about one priority. "Two thirds of the library was saved," he says. "We must stabilise that."

And then restoration work can begin all over again.

ALLERTON Castle's main claim to fame has always been the old nursery rhyme, The Grand Old Duke of York.

Every child knows how it goes:

The Grand Old Duke Of York,

He had ten thousand men,

He marched them up

To the top of the hill,

Then he marched them down again.

The hill up which the Grand Old Duke marched his men is thought to be Arbour Hill, on which the Temple of Victory near Allerton Castle now stands.

The Duke of York in question is believed to have been Prince Frederick Augustus, the second son of King George III. He owned the Allerton Park estate between 1786 and 1789, and rebuilt the house in the Georgian style to designs by Henry Holland.

He may not have been the military dimwit suggested by the nursery rhyme, however.

According to Dorothy Savage, who has been a volunteer guide at Allerton Castle for many years, the rhyme has nothing to do with military manoeuvres at all.

"The Grand Old Duke Of York had ten thousand men, not ten thousand soldiers," she points out. "The story goes that the men were digging out the three lakes that are on the estate and tipping the soil on the hill known as Arbour Hill."

Whether it was a piece of military folly on a grand scale or simply a bit of Georgian landscaping to which we are indebted for the nursery rhyme, Allerton Park's history goes back to a time way before the Grand Old Duke.

According to a chronological history compiled by Dorothy, the land at Allerton passed into the hands of a Norman by the name of William Mauleverer in 1066.

Later, a Benedictine priory was established, and for a while between 1414 and 1544 the land was owned by Kings College, Cambridge.

In 1544, the estate was bought back by the Mauleverers, who rebuilt the house in the mid 16th century. When Richard Mauleverer died without an heir in 1692, however, Allerton passed to his wife - who in turn left it to Richard Arundell, her son by her second marriage.

Arundell rebuilt the house in the 1740s and in 1745 remodelled the church in a Norman revival style, according to Tour UK's Houses In North Yorkshire website.

Following his death in 1758, Allerton passed to Viscount Galway, who in 1786 sold it to Prince Frederick, aka the Grand Old Duke Of York.

After rebuilding the house in the Georgian style, and also ensuring the estate's place in the nursery rhyme hall of fame, Prince Frederick sold it shortly afterwards to Col Thomas Thornton, one of the "greatest sportsmen of his day". He changed its name to Thornville Royal and the estate became a famous sporting and wildlife park.

In 1805, it was bought by the 17th Baron Stourton, the Catholic peer and "premier baron in England". He added a Catholic gothic chapel in 1807. In 1843, his son - Lord Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton - demolished Prince Frederick's Georgian house and built the present house in a Tudor-Gothic style.

During the Second World War, the estate was taken over by the Ministry of Defence and became the HQ of No 6 Bomber Group of the Royal Canadian Air Force. It returned to the Stourton family in 1946 but in 1965, after the death of the 22nd Baron Stourton, the contents were sold off.

The castle was leased to Carmolite monks in 1966 and to a convalescent trust in 1973, then, in 1983, it was bought by American millionaire Dr Gerald Rolph.

The building was in a state of disrepair, needing substantial structural and roof repairs. He set about the restoration, redesigning the interior with late-Gothic decoration in the style of the Palace of Westminster.

The destruction of the Dining Room in particular has affected Dr Rolph. It was, he says, the finest carved room of its kind outside the Palace of Westminster. As well as the carved panelling and huge central table, it was noted for its stained glass windows with the arms of the Mowbray and Stourton families.

During the war when Canadian airmen moved in, every piece of the glass was carefully taken out and stored in the basement, Dorothy Savage says. In 1946 it was brought out again.

"Not one piece of glass had been broken," she says. "It's all gone now. It's irreplaceable."

Updated: 09:49 Tuesday, January 25, 2005