CASTLE Howard, one of Britain's greatest stately homes, came close to destruction in the Second World War. It wasn't a bomb but a chimney fire that placed it in peril. On a November night in 1940, the blaze broke out in the south- east wing.

Throughout the house, children and staff of Queen Margaret's School were sleeping. They had been evacuated to Castle Howard from Scarborough to escape the dangers of air raids. But now they faced another hazard.

The building was well ablaze by the time the evacuation got underway. One sixth former later wrote of looking out of the window to see "that the sky was a lurid crimson, and the woods were lit up by the same brilliant light, and then I saw that flames were pouring from the other side of the house..."

The girls were sent to the air-raid shelter, as the fire spread through the house. In all, nearly 20 rooms were destroyed, including the Kit-Cat Room, the Canaletto Room, the Long Dining Room and the Garden Hall.

Most heartbreaking of all was when the fire reached the famous dome set atop Castle Howard, with its magnificent painting of the Fall of Phaeton by Pellegrini. It was quickly destroyed.

Once everyone was gathered at the air-raid shelter, Christian Howard (later Dame Christian Howard) and her brother Christopher asked some of the older girls to come up and help salvage Castle Howard's priceless art treasures.

As timbers crashed around them, the girls grabbed paintings off the walls and piled them on the lawns.

So Castle Howard and its most precious possessions survived. Seven years later it was still hosting Queen Margaret's School. That was when Virginia Stowell joined as a 15-year-old pupil.

Now living in London she has just published a colour booklet of her memories of that time, Castle Howard's War. This evocative account is illustrated by recently-retired Selby GP Dr Alan Robson's photographs of the 300-year-old estate, and by drawings by Vivienne Smith, head of music at Queen Margaret's until 1980.

Miss Stowell looks back on her remarkable schooldays with great fondness, although life was tough in that freezing winter of 1947. "My first bedroom was Lady Georgiana's Dressing Room, where seven of us slept with small pictures on the walls," she writes.

"At the head of my bed next to the window was a drawing of a rather dishy young man with orange lips (an earlier Howard who died young).

"One icy moonlit night as I lay awake, sleeping next to rough blankets because the sheets were too cold and the tepid water in the tap useless for a hot water bottle (coal was still rationed), I saw an owl standing outside in the snow on the window sill beside me: his bare tree was so cold that he'd come to try and get a little warmth from the building.

"I felt he and I were partners in suffering." The author also recalls skating on the ice of the Great Lake, forays into the dungeons, as the girls called the cellars, and exploring Hawksmoor's Mausoleum.

It was, she concludes, "a fairy tale home: this great realm that was Castle Howard".

Castle Howard's War, priced £3.95 including postage and packing, can be obtained from Virginia Stowell at Flat 4 Corfton Lodge, Corfton Road, Ealing London W5 2HU