It must have been early in the year 1699 that the earl called Vanbrugh to his assistance, for the latter writes on the 25th December that he had been that summer at Lord Carlisle’s, and had visited most of the great houses of the North. Amongst others he had been to Chatsworth, where he stayed four or five days, and had shown to the duke all the designs for Castle Howard, which he “absolutely approved.” Since then they had been submitted to a great many other critics, and as no objection had been raised to them, the stone was already being quarried and the foundations were to be laid in the spring. A model of the house was being prepared in wood, which was to be sent to Kensington for the criticism of the king.[66] Thus fortified with general approval the design was carried out, the works extending over some thirty years. The cost must have been very great, and in a later letter Vanbrugh tells how it was met in part, for in July 1707 he says that Lord Carlisle had “£2,000 from the Sharpers, and is gone down to lay it out in his buildings.”[67] Although the whole of Vanbrugh’s design was not carried out the house is of great size and of palatial magnificence (Fig. 150). Indeed no modern person can be incessantly as grand as the grandeur of the building demands. It requires innumerable servants to keep it in order, innumerable guests to make it cheerful. It involves a great drain upon the owner’s resources, both of temperament and of purse, to fill it with enough people to prevent its being dull, and to maintain it in suitable repair and tidiness. From a practical standpoint the corridors are too many and are out of all proportion to the rooms they serve. There are indeed no rooms of a size commensurate with the outside grandeur; most of them appear small and narrow, their height is as great as their width (Fig. 152), and this must have tended, before the introduction of modern heating, to make them cold. The finest apartment is the hall (Fig. 151), so large and lofty as to occupy an undue proportion of space compared with what is devoted to domestic use. Its effect is more nearly allied to what we are accustomed to associate with a large museum or other public building than with a house.