‘If you put a supermarket here, you’re going to lose a lot. You’ll lose the heart’

It’s a quiet winter’s morning and the mist is beginning to lift over the Great Lake at Castle Howard, Vanbrugh’s baroque masterpiece.

This arcadian estate in the old North Riding of Yorkshire, dotted with Grade I-listed follies and monuments, will forever be associated with Brideshead Revisited, the award-winning ITV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel which was filmed here 30 years ago.

The series, broadcast in the Eighties, transformed the fortunes of this near-derelict stately home and sparked an urgent reappraisal of Britain’s fast disappearing classical heritage.

Waiting on the steps of his private quarters in the east wing, the Honourable Simon Howard, chief architect of Castle Howard’s continuing success, has a pressing matter to attend to. He needs to pick up an amplifier from his local TV shop in the nearby market town of Malton before closing time. “Do you know Gavin?” he asks. “Great guy. I’d much rather go to him than Comet in York.”

It was Simon who set about the business of stopping Castle Howard falling down. It was crumbling into ruin when he took over. The roof had fallen in, the silk damask curtains had rotted and collapsed. The fabulous Canalettos (today worth at least twenty million each) which had not been burned in a blaze in the 1940s had been disposed of for a fire sale price.

Gold-framed 18th-century Adam mirrors and priceless French tapestries lay in ashes and smithereens on the floor. When the firefighters had finished, Castle Howard was ankle deep in water which further destroyed the building’s fabric.

From this desperate situation, Simon Howard has overseen Castle Howard’s rise from the ruins. Slowly, painfully and at considerable expense, he has restored its magnificent edifice and the treasures it holds, as well as initiating extraordinary new measures such as a revolutionary heating system pumped from water heated deep underground.

His incredible enterprise culminated this year when Castle Howard was voted one of the Top Ten Great Houses in the World to visit by Lonely Planet, ranking alongside Versailles and the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg.

Now, however, Simon is engaged in an equally vital battle to save another national treasure from destruction.

His is one of the loudest voices, but by no means the only one, protesting against plans by Ryedale District Council to allow a supersized supermarket, as big as Manchester United’s football stadium, to be built just three minutes from Malton’s town centre.

In recent weeks, the roll call of VIPs has gathered strength. Ian Balding, trainer of the Derby winner Mill Reef, interested in building the only Northern rehab unit for injured jockeys in the town, has signed up. So has William Worsley, of the Country Landowners’ Association, along with Royal Ballet dancer Samantha Raine ,who lives in Ryedale, and Kate McCarney, of the Royal Opera House.

Barry Cryer, one of Britain’s top comedic writers, says: “I wholeheartedly pledge my support to the people of Malton in their efforts to repel superstore invasion, be it by Tesco or similar predators. The time has come to take a stand in support of local businesses and I am happy to join in.”

All are unequivocal in their condemnation of the council, certain that another supermarket will destroy the fragile balance of local shops and community spirit that has been the hallmark of this special little town through the centuries.

Malton is a heartbeat of the kind of England we most cherish. Once walled, it was built on an escarpment overlooking the meandering River Derwent. It was called Derventio in Roman times, one of the most important garrisons north of York. For over 1,000 years Malton’s rich agricultural hinterland, the Wolds, the Vale of Pickering and the North York Moors, has defined the town’s status and prosperity.

Today, small family businesses still occupy the exquisite Georgian and Victorian shops in the market square, clustered round the Norman church of St Michael’s. They sell everything from ropes and pencils to game pies and jelly babies.

They are proud of their unique architectural heritage amongst which is the very building where Charles Dickens found inspiration for A Christmas Carol and perhaps his most famous characters of all, Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

If the superstore goes ahead and small shopkeepers are driven out of business one of the first casualties will be the Dickens museum in Chancery Lane, once the office of a Malton lawyer, Charles Smithson whose intimate friend was Charles Dickens. Dickens described Malton as “the most remarkable place of its size in England and immeasurably the most beautiful”.

Dickens would certainly recognise Malton if he came back today. One of the reasons the town has remained unspoiled is because it has been owned by only a handful of families since the Norman Conquest. Sixty per cent of the property in Malton is still in the hands of the Fitzwilliam Estate and the Naylor Leyland family, who are also vigorously opposing the supermarket.

In recent years, the Naylor Leylands have repositioned the town as a foodie destination. Top chefs, most recently Antonio Carluccio from London, visit regularly, endorsing award-winning food grown by hundreds of independent local producers.

But looming over this idyll is a massive “all categories” superstore, which local intelligence points to being Tesco. The site, the town’s valued car park, has already been sold subject to planning permission by Conservative Ryedale District Council to a developer for £5m, who is in effect acting as the middle man.

This is the way large supermarkets set about deflecting criticism from them. Only when final planning permission is granted by the district council will the identity of the company planning to open the store be revealed.

This is particularly distressing to the residents of Malton as their car park was originally given to the town council in the 1950s for a peppercorn £500 by the Fitzwilliam Estate as a philanthropic gesture. For the council to then betray this generosity by selling the plot and giving planning permission on it is seen as an act of utmost treachery.

It is not as though Malton, with a population of just 4,000, doesn’t have a supermarket. It has three. But if a 50,000 sq ft store gets the go-ahead, the hundred or so small shopkeepers Simon Howard has known all his life and who are already struggling will be driven out.

Melanie, the daughter of Derek Fox the butcher whose family has traded here for 200 years wants to know, “Who’ll come and buy a pound of sausages from me when they’ve been to a Tesco or one of the other big supermarkets? It’ll kill us.”

Alastair Leefe, the fifth generation of his family selling stationery, art materials and local history books, says what the council is doing is “wanton destruction”. Mennells, the old-fashioned sweetshop full of gobstoppers and coconut mushrooms, can’t see how it can survive. Neither does Steven Shaw the baker. It is even harder to envisage how the unique little shop John Woodhalls, the “rope, net and cover makers”, will be able to cope when Malton ceases to function as an authentic working town.

Which is why, as its battle cry, Malton has latched on to David Cameron’s Big Society. His call for localism found immediate resonance here.

As local resident Emma Brooksbank explains: “I’ve lived near Malton for 40 years and took no interest in local politics but was stirred into action when I realised that far from resisting a superstore my own council was going to welcome it.

“For me there was no going back. We met one bitterly cold night last November and took Cameron at his word.

“We had a farmers’ meeting in the cattle market with the bellowing of bullocks drowning out the speakers and then two of us went to warm up in a tea shop. We decided to have a go.”

They drew up a local plan which addressed wide-ranging issues in the town, something their own council had not done for 10 years. It was then put to the townspeople of Malton to vote upon.

For five weeks, a double-decker bus became a rallying point in the market square. They were asked to vote on two developments, one a food store proposal submitted by the Fitzwilliam Estate on a sympathetic scale with historic Malton on the site of the old cattle market, and the other a leviathan superstore.

Townspeople were in no doubt. They wanted something to fit in with their townscape, organically linked to their market place, and designed in Cameron’s words to make their town “a stronger, nicer, better place to live”.

They presented this plan to the council. Who took no notice of it. Neither did their local Conservative MP Anne McIntosh.

The so-called Communities Secretary Eric Pickles doesn’t want to know either, citing “planning regulations” as his get-out clause.

Not to be deterred, local people delivered a 2,000-signature petition direct to his office in London last week.

Simon Howard’s name was up there at the top of the petition. He is as passionate as anyone about protecting his home town.

“I went to St Andrew’s school in Malton when I was three,” he says. “And had ballet lessons in what is now the Mount Hotel. I remember all my school friends and of course people do gravitate back to Yorkshire.

“We [Becky, his second wife Rebecca Sieff, and their nine-year-old twins Octavia and Merlin] come into Malton a lot.

“We know all the shopkeepers. Malton hasn’t changed that much. Which is why it is so important.

“Malton has a wonderful selection of small shops,” he adds. “They cater for everybody. Everyone round here uses Malton because it’s got so many quirky little shops.

“It is a bustling town. You only have to look today, a Thursday afternoon, and it’s buzzing. And we already have a Morrisons [which turns over £30m a year, 10 times the entire trade in the town], we already have an smaller Asda and a Sainsbury’s. If you put another supermarket here, I mean a really big one, you’re going to lose a lot... you’re going to lose the butchers, you’re going to lose the fishmongers. You’re going to lose the heart. What do they all become? Charity shops?

“But what I find so galling is that the local authority isn’t listening. When I talk to local people they disapprove of this whole project. They really don’t want it, and they are not being listened to. The council are the elected representatives and they should be listening.

“There is only one way round it,” he maintains. “When it comes to elections you vote them off. That is where the problem lies because I don’t think people know what their own councillor is voting for. Well, hang on a minute, they should be writing to their local councillor and saying, ‘I disapprove of this’.

“I think a lot of people think, ‘Politics, Oh God I can’t cope with it’, and brush it under the carpet as though it is something dirty. Which a lot of it is, but people around here are good at speaking their minds... apathy has to be fought.”

Which pretty much sums up how Simon Howard set about rescuing his own family inheritance. The third son of four boys of George, Lord Howard, a former chairman of the BBC and his wife Lady Cecilia, Simon has only now managed to “crack the back”, as he puts it, of the restoration work at Castle Howard.

“It could so easily have gone,” says Simon. “If my father had been killed (as his two brothers were) during the war I think the estate would have been sold. The trustees had already started selling things but my father had decided he was coming back. Christie’s had even advised they would never get a better price for the Canalettos.”

For Malton, Simon Howard’s intervention has come at a critical time. Local people are immensely proud of his fight to save Castle Howard and are convinced his considerable strengths are energising them in their battle even though Ryedale District Council continues to demand Malton be remodelled, insisting: “The historic buildings in the town centre do not provide suitable accommodation for many high street retailers, so there is limited choice, especially clothing and fashion... [the supermarket] development can bring much needed visitors and new investment to Malton town centre.”

So what will happen next?

Simon Howard is unequivocal. “If a Tesco comes... start counting the shops as they go down,” he says. “Eric Pickles should respond to these urgent calls from local people and make a ruling. How can a council award itself planning permission when it stands to gain from it? It is against all policies of transparency and democracy.”

How spa town fell to Tesco

The battle between independent shops and the supermarket giants is one that has been replayed up and down the country in recent years.

Just last month a long- running campaign against plans to build a Tesco superstore in Harrogate was forced to admit defeat when the Government announced it would not be holding a public inquiry into the development.

The spa town is the last postcode in mainland Britain without a Tesco supermarket and the proposals sparked a storm of controversy, with many claiming the arrival of a superstore would spell the death knell for Harrogate town centre.

After Harrogate Borough Council approved the plans earlier this year, the town’s business leaders staged an 11th hour bid to persuade the Government to call in the plans for a public inquiry, but it refused. The superstore, which is expected to open within the next two years, is expected to create more than 300 jobs and attract up to 20,000 customers a week.