Gwrych Castle

 

It has just been announced that Gwrych Castle in North Wales is to receive £2.2 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The money will be spent to stabilise the ruins, reinserting new floors and rooms in order to bring a suite of rooms back into use. The money is the latest development in the somewhat chequered history of the house, which has most recently been in the news as the host of the series I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

 

It is often observed that Gwrych Castle is a relatively modern creation: a neo gothic fantasy of the early decades of the nineteenth century. In fact, as I discovered on a recent visit, it has a much longer history. At the heart of the ruins as they are today is a medieval house, called Bronhaul or Y Fron, part of the Lloyd family estate. By the early nineteenth century this house had been damaged by fire, and it became instead the heart of Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh’s fantasy creation of Gwrych Castle. Some of the fire-damaged timbers of this earlier house can still be seen in the ruins of the castle today.

 

Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh, born 1788, was a ‘man of taste’ who set about to honour his family’s ancestry by concocting a picturesque vision of a rambling, medieval castle. He commissioned Charles Augustus Busby (1788-1834) to produce plans in 1813, and was pleased with the results. But within a few years, having inherited the property outright in 1815, Lloyd adapted Busby’s plans. He adapted Busby’s essential idea – of two wings around a central tower – but instead chose to take advantage of the local topography by setting the castle into the hillside. For materials, he quarried limestone and mined lead, and he engaged Thomas Rickman of Liverpool to create a new set of elevations. Work began in 1819 and was mostly finished by 1822. Cast iron was used to create gothic window tracery, encasing stained glass windows. The effect must have been overwhelming.

 

Gwrych remained a lived-in family home for another century or so. Lloyd’s granddaughter, Winifred, became Countess of Dundonald on marriage. She continued to make changes to the house, engaging Detmar Blow to make several significant interventions including a grand marble staircase. Winifred died in 1924, leaving the house to the Prince of Wales, who declined it such that the Church of Wales became the owner. The Earl of Dundonald bought it back, claiming his wife had gone mad. But no member of the family lived there ever again.

 

Gwrych Castle then suffered the fate that so many houses suffered in the second half of the twentieth century: ever-changing and revolving ownership, leading to eventual demise. During the war the house was used by Jewish refugees who came across in 1939 on the Kindertransport. After the war the place was opened as a visitor attraction, offering medieval jousting spectacles – it was ‘Britain’s first theme park’ according to Mark Baker. In the late 1980s the house was sold again to an absentee American businessman. During this time the structure was subject to vandalism and the wilful salvage of timbers, lead and other materials. By the mid 1990s the castle was in a ruinous state, having become a squat for New Age Travellers. Mark Baker, just 11 years old in 1997, set up a Preservation Trust with the help of his family, to raise awareness of the castle’s history. In 2018 the trust was able to purchase a lease of the castle, and begin its work to reverse the years of neglect and bring this magical place back to life.

 

I visited on a busy day in early August 2023: the car park was rammed and visitors were enjoying the experience. A magic potion event was taking place in the castle itself: a theatrical experience, taking full advantage of the Hogwarts-like setting. The holiday accommodation in the castle lodge was fully booked for the season. There were adverts for hiring the castle as an events space: for weddings or private parties. These, along with I’m A Celebrity, of course, are the means by which houses sustain themselves in the early twenty-first century.