An Englishman's home

Henry Hornyold-Strickland is proud of his ancestral home, near Kendal, but says living in a castle is not as luxurious as you might think.

- Paul Mackenzie

Tell someone you live in a castle and the chances are they’ll picture you in grand palatial rooms with luxurious decor. For Henry Hornyold-Strickland, the reality is rather different.

His family have lived at Sizergh Castle for almost 800 years and while the parts of the house open to the public fit that image, his living quarters in the north wing are much less opulent.

His kitchen, for example, features a centuries old fireplace and an Aga, but no running water. For that he must go to the scullery with its sloping floor and wonky Belfast sink which is at such an angle that water settles at the lower end, the right, leaving the plughole high and dry on the left.

‘I’ve got used to living in an environment that’s medieval so it’s not a problem’

There are, as Henry puts it, ‘issues with stability’. Some of the thick stone walls are slowly sinking, causing the internal walls and floors to assume unnatural angles. A six foot marker among the generations whose heights are measured on the scullery doorframe is now nearer five foot ten.

The kitchen walls – last decorated by Henry’s mother, Angela, in about 1970 – are littered with a network of cracks. And those cracks are about the only consistent feature of the decor in the north wing and are particularly pronounced in some of the first floor bedrooms.

The house was given by the Hornyold-Stricklands to the National Trust in 1950, on the condition that the family could continue to live there.

‘The family ran the opening of the house for a couple of decades on behalf of the National Trust, but I think my mother found that quite difficult,’ Henry says.