Harewood breaks the £1m income barrier

Harewood House, near Leeds, also confirmed that a number of overseas candidates have applied to become chief executive of the trust which looks after the house and grounds.

Viscount David Lascelles, who is the heir to the estate, said he hoped to reveal the identity of the new chief executive of the Harewood House Trust by the end of October. The current chief executive, Richard Mansell, is stepping down at the end of the year.

The Harewood House Trust is a charitable educational organisation which was set up to conserve Harewood House, its collections, grounds, gardens and buildings.

Mr Lascelles told the Yorkshire Post: "In difficult economic times, tourism in the north has had quite a good year. Harewood's visitor numbers are up by 9.4 per cent in the year to date and 12.7 per cent against budget to 217,412. Primary income is up by 8 per cent to 1.168m so far this year."

Last year, Harewood entered into a partnership agreement with Boutique Catering, the hospitality company, and Logistik, the Leeds-based design and communications company, to make the house and its grounds more accessible to the leisure and hospitality markets.

Mr Lascelles said: "The dilemma Harewood faces is that, as an open air venue, we are vulnerable to the weather. We have to find a way to make the business not so heavily dependent on something that we have no control over.

"Harewood Hospitality was set up to run all commercial activities: catering, retail and events. We have to look at everything, including what our ideal mix of events would be.

"We want to have a harder commercial edge and ensure more of the income comes to Harewood. We are masters of our own fate. We are not dependent on public sector income. People who are dependent on public sector income are facing an uncertain future. But if we get it wrong, there is nobody to bail us out."

Harewood already hosts weddings, outdoor concerts and corporate events. Mr Lascelles said he planned to do bigger events in a "more sophisticated and slightly bigger way", adding: "The Harewood mantra is all about quality."

He has high hopes for the Harewood Christmas Festival, which runs from Friday, November 26 to Sunday, December 19. The festival will run between these dates from Wednesday to Sunday, from noon to 10pm.

Mr Lascelles said: "There will be attractions to keep the kids amused while adults can go Christmas shopping."

He stressed that Harewood couldn't remain open all year, because the grounds take a battering and need time to recover.

He added: "We could have more specialist events in particular areas. We have most of our visitors in the summer holidays. We need to spread that load a bit."

He said there had been a number of high quality applicants for the chief executive's role, including some from Europe.

He added: "We have to get that right balance. First and foremost, we're a cultural organisation, with beautiful gardens, a wonderful house and collections and ground-breaking exhibitions and education programmes.

"In striving to be more commercial, we mustn't kill the goose that lays the golden egg."

Although he would like to see more visitors, he didn't want the number to reach unmanageable proportions.

"If you have to queue for hours to get in, that's not a nice visitor experience," he added.

"We have cracked the 250,000 visitors to the trust number twice – in years when there was a Turner exhibition and another called Walking with Dinosaurs."

Taking care of the catering

Harewood House, which dates from the 18th century, took its catering and events operation in-house in 2009 after being previously sub-contracted to third parties.

Earlier this year, Richard Mansell, who is stepping down as chief executive of the Harewood House Trust at the end of 2010, said the early signs were that the arrangement was generating "significantly greater" income for Harewood.

Mr Mansell became chief executive of the Harewood House Trust in February 2008.

In May, Harewood successfully sued a catering firm for thousands of pounds in unpaid commission. The firm, Dine Catering, provided services for events on the estate from 2005 until 2008.