Castle Howard has opened its 2024 festive event ‘Alice’s Christmas Wonderland’ where the 300-year-old stately home is transformed into an immersive Christmas experience, dressed in set pieces, decorations, floristry, projections, lighting and sound.
Former Great British Bake Off baker from the 2019 season, Helena Garcia, attended the launch and spoke to The Yorkshire Post about her journey since she left the show.
The centrepiece is a 27-foot Christmas tree in Castle Howard’s Great Hall and installed by a team of 22 using a specialist winch system.
The Alice’s Christmas Wonderland creative team CLW Event Design, headed by Charlotte Lloyd Webber and Adrian Lillie, have worked on the project since January 2024. The installation process in the house took two weeks to complete and includes 30,000 baubles on display, with the team reusing and recycling products where possible and favouring more sustainable materials such as paper and glass.
Various life-size sculptures of the Queen of Hearts, the White Queen, Alice and the Caterpillar are also included.
Former Great British Bake Off baker from the 2019 season, Helena Garcia, attended the launch and spoke to The Yorkshire Post about her journey since she left the show.
The centrepiece is a 27-foot Christmas tree in Castle Howard’s Great Hall and installed by a team of 22 using a specialist winch system.
The Alice’s Christmas Wonderland creative team CLW Event Design, headed by Charlotte Lloyd Webber and Adrian Lillie, have worked on the project since January 2024. The installation process in the house took two weeks to complete and includes 30,000 baubles on display, with the team reusing and recycling products where possible and favouring more sustainable materials such as paper and glass.
Various life-size sculptures of the Queen of Hearts, the White Queen, Alice and the Caterpillar are also included.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm about to walk into the Alice's Christmas Wonderland Media Lounge at Castle Howard's today, very looking forward to it.
00:09Hi, my name is Elena Garcia, and I was a baker in the Great British Bake Off in 2019.
00:31After the show, a few of us were invited to an award show in Leeds, and I was actually sat at the table with the marketing team of Castle Howard, and that's how the connection started.
00:44Since then, I've been invited to the PR day of the Christmas opening, which is always a highlight of the winter for me.
00:53And it's actually this year that, for the first time, I convinced Castle Howard to do something similar for Halloween, and I hosted two spooky afternoon tea events here in the castle, and I had a pop-up shop in their farm shop.
01:08And it was a success, and I hope that we continue to do that every year.
01:12So going back to Bake Off, it was a pretty incredible experience that very surprisingly changed my career.
01:21I am now writing my sixth cookbook since the show, I still do a lot of things related to Bake Off.
01:29It really has made me professionally what I am today.
01:34And one of those things was also the fact that after the show, I got cast to make a cameo appearance in the HBO show, What We Do in the Shadows, and that was just insane and an incredible experience.
01:47I was just a baker from a British show, and suddenly I'm flown first class to Canada, to Toronto, to film with Matt Berry, and to do what previously Tilda Swinton did, and all the big names that played vampires.
02:03And I played a witch that kept herself young by using the semen of vampires.
02:09That's the kind of comedy show that What We Do in the Shadows is.
02:14So yeah, it's been a wild ride, and one that I'm certainly embracing and loving.
02:21Hi, I'm Adrian Lilley, I am Design Director for CRW Event Design.
02:25And I'm very excited to be talking to you about Alice's Christmas Wonderland.
02:32Everyone always asks us, where do your ideas come from, and how are you going to top last year, because we've obviously been working here at the castle since 2017.
02:42This is our eighth year on site.
02:46We first of all always go back to the origins of the house.
02:50And we always think about, with fresh eyes, the architecture, the interiors, the house collection and the amazing artwork, and the people who inhabit it, who have inhabited it and continue to do so.
03:05And then, working with something like a book like Alice Among the Land, and also Alice Through the Looking Glass, we go right back and make sure we've pre-read it.
03:15No matter how well we think we know it, we read it with the house in mind.
03:20Because everything we do is very specific to the client we're working for.
03:26We work for many state-run homes across the UK, so we're always thinking about how we adapt it and make it specific to that moment.
03:34So Alice has been a lot of fun, because we didn't feel we had to follow an absolute narrative.
03:40And we could sort of pick and choose our favourite characters from both books, and then slot them into their perfect sort of environment.
03:49We picked the perfect room that they would really resonate in, and we could then build it from there.
03:57So that was sort of the beginning of the design process.
04:03The other big thing that really sprang to mind with Alice is scale.
04:07Because we go from her drinking the potion and shrinking to tiny, to then eating the cake and going huge.
04:14And that really works with the scale and the space that Castle Howard owns, and the rooms we work with.
04:20So we've had a lot of fun doing some little miniature things, but then doing some huge sculptures this year.
04:27Which was a new undertaking, and quite a challenge.
04:31From steel manufacture that had to be bespokely done by our senior designer, Dave.
04:37Challenging our sculptor, Mandy Bryson, to go really big with our queens.
04:43Our Queen of Hearts, and our White Queen, and our Queen Alice.
04:46That was a big challenge.
04:48But it now looks incredible, now that we've got it all in place.
04:52I'm over the moon.
04:54And I think my favourite room is probably the Long Gallery.
04:57I wasn't sure about it, but it was the last room we were working on.
05:01And we were working on it until late last night.
05:03And it has absolutely lived up to everything I had planned and designed.
05:08So we're very excited to be opening to our members tomorrow.
05:13And then on Friday to be opening the house fully to everybody.
05:20And I hope it just puts a smile on everybody's face.
05:23And you just start with a bit of Christmas spirit and a lot of fun.
05:32Oh yay!
05:34Oh yay!
05:36Oh yay!
05:39I'm Jokes Melbourne, so hear my call.
05:43With Wonderland news for one and all.
05:47Today, we follow the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole for a grand Christmas adventure.
05:54But oh, don't be late.
05:56And watch out for a Cheshire Cat, a Mad Hatter and a giant Christmas tree that all await.
06:03Oh yay!
06:04Oh yay!
06:05Oh yay!
06:07Can we hear about the ghosts in the car?
06:10Sure.
06:11There's only two of them.
06:12It's a zombie.
06:13It's a zombie.
06:14It's a zombie.
06:15Sure.
06:16Sure.
06:17Afterwards, just as we're now in the monstrous grotto, there's black-eyed tar-heads.
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