Ryedale’s legacy for future generations (From Gazette & Herald)

Ryedale’s legacy for future generations

3:09pm Thursday 2nd July 2009

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BOTH through over-use and application the phrase “an icon” has become devalued, but Castle Howard is such.

Gloriously designed, superbly set, it is the very epitome of the romantic English stately home. For those who were unfamiliar with that fact, along came the BBC’s Brideshead Revisited – and along came the great British public and many thousands of foreign tourists to Castle Howard.

To say that the estate has blossomed ever since under its present stewardship would be an understatement. Through imaginative business acumen, through innovation and investment, an extraordinarily successful enterprise has grown into one of the region’s top money-making attractions.

The overwhelming majority of fair-minded people will have absolutely no doubts in conceding that maximum commercial success has been extracted from one of this country’s most splendid historical endowments.

And here’s the rub. On one hand we have an increasingly popular and profitable company with a quite unique architectural offering, supported by a variety of ancillary attractions – gardens, lakeside camping, arboretum, garden centre outdoor concerts and firework displays, and all encompassed by thousands of estate acres. The estate has worked hard and, in turn, provided work for some local people. By any measure a success story.

On the other hand we are told there are problems. Most companies have problems. They encounter them in production, staff, marketing, sales. And, if they wish to remain successful, solve them. And they solve them, in the main, by using their own expertise, skills – and cash.

The problems at Castle Howard are, apparently, longstanding and serious. Which begs the question: would they be so serious if a more far-sighted strategy and then more effort and money been used to solve them over the years? It is all very well stating that the Howard family mausoleum – a building modelled on a Roman tomb by Nicholas Hawksmoor in the 18th-century – is adjudged to be of international significance; the fact is that it is also a privately owned commercially exploited entity and, either as a stand-alone feature for party visits or simply seen by other paying visitors as a commanding adjunct to the main house, a company asset. Why then is the general public being asked, either as taxpayers through dispensation by the Government quango English Heritage or Ryedale District Council, or simply through suggested personal fundraising, to consider subsidising a large and profitable private concern for the repair and upkeep of a mausoleum and, more astonishingly, an estate village?

Coneysthorpe is undoubtedly a charming spot, coveted by many as a place to live in its peaceful and timeless setting, as they visit the estate or ramble along the Centenary Way. But surely it is not their responsibility to undertake its running repairs, whether inside or outside the cottages. The idea of paying to upkeep the fabric of other people’s homes that are the responsibility of, and form a constituent element in the overall budget of, an affluent estate, is patently absurd.

Mr Neil Redfern of English Heritage, indicated that this public money would “protect the tourist indistry”: he would probably get a slightly more sympathetic hearing if, in this particular case anyway, the tourist industry did a little more to protect itself with its own earnings.

If public money is expended in this way – be it from the national or the local pocket – then this reluctant contributor would expect in return company accountability and transparency in income and expenditure.

An estate spokesperson said the company was working with both the ministerial body and the local council to “prioritise investment to work towards full restoration of the wider estate”, and spends “six figure sums annually on restoration and conservation across the estate”. The latter is a little like saying it has running and up-dating costs. Most companies do.

With reference to the “prioritising investment” – in correspondence from the Department of Culture 18 months ago the department stated that English Heritage had not been asked to consider making a grant towards the mausoleum’s repair and had not entered into discussions about this possibility in recent years.

The Castle Howard Estate was “planning to tackle the repairs itself over a 10-12 year period”.

Apparently the current quango’s predecessor (the Department of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings) offered a grant of more than £1million to Castle Howard around 30 years ago, and the cost of the outstanding repairs is around a further £1m.

In its headline story and its own leading article, the Gazette & Herald has, at a time of great sensitivity on the subjects of personal financial circumstances in the worst recession for more than 50 years and the consequent substantial cut-backs in public spending (recognised across the political spectrum), opened an important and wide-ranging debate: the timing of this sort of polemical thrust by a State-funded body is particularly unfortunate when more and more people are losing their livelihoods, their homes and their pensions. All Government departments are being told by the Treasury that they will have to exercise restraint, and the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn – whose brief embraces Rural Affairs – has already acknowledged this.

The very existence of some quangos could be in jeopardy. Certainly there will funding cutbacks. That English Heritage should be articulating this sort of campaign emphasis at the moment is, to say the least, surprising. Possibly it is because they fear such cuts, that they have put forward these ideas now. I know other people of a probably more traditional persuasion will have views different from mine. That’s as it should be. Open and healthy debate is the cornerstone of democracy.

But in my view as a council taxpayer, for this area sympathetically targeted financial strategies to help ordinary people – the difficult and complex task of creating and attracting new jobs and building more affordable homes – is the real priority. A thriving and prosperous Ryedale is the only worthwhile legacy for future generations.

Mr E RAINE, East Heslerton

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