Two imposing features of Castle Howard’s 300 year old designed landscape, the lime avenue and stray walls, have been removed from the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register thanks to a programme of restoration work.

The register, an annual snapshot of the health of England’s historic environment, includes listed buildings and structural scheduled monuments; archaeology assessments cover earthworks and buried archaeology.

The Hon. Nicholas Howard comments: ‘I am delighted that the stray walls and the avenue have been taken off the Heritage at Risk register. This has been made possible through the grants made available by Historic England, Natural England, and the Country House Foundation.’

Restoration to the lime avenue which lines the grand processional approach to the 18th century house has ensured it is safe-guarded for the future and its striking appearance maintained.

800 trees make up the avenue and as part of the work around 60 were felled with 200 more having some form of tree surgery. The look of the avenue will now be re-established following the planting of over 300 new trees.

The mock-medieval stray walls which were built in around 1720 by Sir John Vanbrugh and stretch for three quarters of a mile across the landscape have also been restored and removed from the Heritage at Risk register. The four metre high walls and buttresses along with the square and circular interval towels have been carefully rebuilt to once again form a dramatic part of the landscape.

Nicholas Howard continued: ‘Castle Howard has a rolling conservation deficit of between £40m and £50m. The exterior landscape and its buildings are as important as Castle Howard itself, at over 300 years old it is not surprising that their preservation is an ongoing and expensive business. The Heritage at Risk register is a very useful tool in assessing where the priorities lie in this work.

‘It is thanks to these bodies, in particular Historic England (and its predecessors such as English Heritage and The Historic Buildings Council) and the income generated from our 250,000 visitors that we have managed to continue to restore these important features in our landscape. Between them, the avenues and the stray walls act as an overture to Castle Howard, announcing its presence and preparing the visitor for its exuberance. As the new trees take root and the crisp lines of the restored walls cut across the avenue, that overture is heard once more as clearly as the day it was written.’

The Castle Howard Estate contains an unrivalled collection of 18th- and 19th-century monuments and structures, which comprise 20% of Grade 1 listed structure in the Ryedale area. Several structures remain on the Heritage at Risk Register, including the private family Mausoleum which was built between 1728-1742 to the design of Nicholas Hawksmoor.