Friends mourn tragic former chatelaine of Castle Howard

She was the vivacious blonde who married one of Britain’s richest aristocrats, before becoming chatelaine of Castle howard. But friends of the effervescent Annette ‘Scruff’ howard are in mourning today, following her death aged 71.

And none are more distressed than her goddaughter Cara Delevingne and her sisters, Poppy and Chloe.

‘My girls are devastated,’ their mother, Pandora, tells me. ‘It’s horrible for all of us — Cara especially, on the other side of the world. She was an amazing woman — quite extraordinary, like a second mother to them, always there for them.’

Scruff, pictured below, was also bewitching to men. By the age of 25 she had become a countess, marrying earl Compton, as his second wife, in 1974.

The marriage ended in divorce after just three years.

But within five years Scruff was installed in arguably the most fabulous of all British stately homes, Castle howard in Yorkshire, after marrying Simon howard who had taken it over from his father, Lord howard of henderskelfe, aged only 27.

‘We used to go up to Castle howard and stay for three or four weeks, in the summer,’ recalls Pandora. ‘She was like a sort of Pied Piper to kids. She loved them and they loved her — had that magic.’ Scruff led them across the 10,000-acre estate and beyond — ‘to Scarborough to eat fish and chips in newspaper. They adored her.’ Castle howard had by then become known to a global audience, after its starring role in the television adaptation of evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited. Scruff helped restore 20 rooms as well as taking charge of the house’s 52 guides.

But there was what Pandora calls one ‘desperate sadness’ — a lack of children of her own. ‘I was pregnant with Cara when she was trying her last round of IVF; I said: “We’re going to have these babies together, Scruff.” ’ But it proved not to be.

‘If you’re a woman like that — a huge character who loves life, laughter and children, and adventure — and you don’t get to get them yourself, when you want them really badly, it’s shattering. But she held her head high. She never complained.’

her marriage to Simon howard ended after 17 years. Yet such was her generosity of spirit that, when howard’s new wife, Rebecca Sieff, gave birth to twins, Scruff unhesitatingly sent her flowers. ‘An amazing thing to do,’ reflects Pandora.