Gwrych Castle

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button_lang_welshGwrych Castle, Abergele

This is one of Britain’s finest examples of architecture in medieval style from the early 19th century. Different sections of the castle are based on specific medieval castles in North Wales. To hear how to pronounce Gwrych, press play:

Portrait of Lady DundonaldPreviously an Elizabethan house stood at the site, owned by the Lloyd family of Gwrych. Lloyd Bamford-Hesketh conceived the new castle as a memorial to his ancestors. Building took place from 1812 to 1822. The castle was extended by later generations of the family, including Lord and Lady Dundonald in the early 20th century.

Lady Dundonald spoke Welsh and was a patron of the arts, founding a harp competition and being inducted into the Gorsedd of Bards. She also promoted women craftworkers and artists, in Britain and abroad. She founded two military hospitals in the First World War. King George VI thanked her for “looking after my soldiers” when he visited one of the hospitals, near London Victoria station, in 1916. A photograph from the period shows her nursing Maori soldiers from New Zealand.

In the Second World War, the castle was home to 180 boys and girls who had been evacuated from Nazi-occupied Europe by the Kindertransport, which moved young Jewish refugees to safety in Britain in 1938 and 1939. The aim was to return the youngsters to their parents when the Nazi “crisis” was over, but by August 1940 the children at Gwrych were being prepared for eventual emigration to Palestine. They were under the care of James Burke, 31, who had previously worked in Switzerland and Austria for the International Voluntary Service for Peace and Society of Friends (Quakers). Abergele’s Medical Hall supplied medicines for the children.

The aerial photo, courtesy of the Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Wales, shows the castle in 1932. It is from the Aerofilms Collection of the National Monuments Record of Wales.

Aerial photo of Gwrych Castle in 1932
Gwrych Castle in 1932, courtesy of the RCAHMW and its Coflein website

The Dundonalds sold Gwrych Castle in 1946, ending almost 1,000 years of the family’s ownership of the site. In the post-war decades, tourists flocked to its medieval-style banquets, markets and jousting events and rode on its miniature railway. Under successive owners from 1990 onwards, the castle decayed and was stripped of fittings.

The situation so appalled local schoolboy Mark Baker that, aged 12, he founded the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust in 1997. His dogged determination bore fruit in 2018, when the trust bought the castle (with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Richard Broyd Charitable Trust). The trust is restoring sections of the castle and gardens. Follow the link below for details of visiting times.

In November 2020 the castle hosted the ITV show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! because the Covid-19 pandemic prevented the show being filmed at its usual location in Australia.

Postcode: LL22 8ET    View Location Map

Gwrych Castle website

Copies of the aerial photo and other images are available from the RCAHMW. Contact: nmr.wales@rcahmw.gov.uk