A stately house once associated with aristocrats and a king is now to help educate hundreds of disadvantaged children living in poverty on its doorstep – but it needs your help to do it.

Lauderdale House is to launch a £240,600 education and outreach programme which will teach some of the area’s poorest children about heritage and the arts at the 16th-century Highgate mansion, owned over the centuries by a string of dukes and earls and which called King Charles II a regular resident.

It will be the first time many of the youngsters have been to a historic house.

But the house desperately needs your donations. Lauderdale’s chairman Nick Peacey said: “Part of the reason people stay away is because they don’t see it as somewhere welcoming. Of course, it’s not a bit stuffy, and there are lots of good things going on there.”

He added: “Waterlow Park started with the giving of a garden to the gardenless and if we are to pick up and continue that heritage, this is what we have to do.”

A new education and outreach officer will lead the programme aimed at people aged 11 to 24 from four Camden secondary schools and four community centres.

But before the programme can launch as part of the house’s larger restoration project, Lauderdale needs to raise £125,000 through its online crowdfunding drive Lauderdale Transformed: The Historic Galleries by the end of the month to refurbish the upper floor galleries.

Donate online or by paying at the house with cheques, cash and credit cards.