Gwrych Castle History & Exploration

We're here, we finally made it to Grick Castle and my first impressions are just wow, it's utterly enchanting and beautiful. It looks like a fairy tale castle, like a medieval fortress. However, things are not quite what they seem. The castle was actually built in around 1812, somewhere between 1812 to 1819 by Lloyd Hesker. Okay, I think it's time we should go explore. The castle was built between 1812 and 1822 by Lloyd Hesker, Banford Hesker, as a memorial to his mother Frances Lloyd and her ancestors that can be traced back to the medieval period as being The castle was built on the site of an earlier Elizabethan house and is also considered to be one of the first Gothic pollies in Northern Europe, but has no military effect. Later generations of the family continued to improve and extend the castle, particularly so during the time of Winifred, Countess of Dundallon, when she inherited the castle in 1894. Winifred spoke Welsh, was a patron of the arts and promoted women craft workers and artists. During the First World War, she founded two military hospitals. Winifred was a strong and determined lady who left their mark on the castle by installing a magnificent marble 52-step staircase. The photograph shows how it once looked and then how it is today. Winifred had an arranged marriage to Douglas Cochrane, but this was not a happy marriage and in 1906 she banished him from the castle. Following her death, she left the castle in her will to King George V. In retaliation to this, Douglas went as far as burning all of the Countess's private papers. In 1928, Douglas bought back the castle for £78,000, that's equivalent to approximately £4.75 million in 2019. In order to buy back the castle, Douglas sold most of the castle's contents to fund the purchase. During the castle's heyday, it boasted an astonishing 128 rooms. These included out buildings, 28 bedrooms, an inner and outer hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, study, billiards room, drawing room and more. It also had 19 embattled towers. Many of these are still standing and helped to give the castle a real fairy tale appearance. During the Second World War, the castle housed 200 Jewish refugees as part of the Kindertransport programme. Following the war, the castle was open to the public and enjoyed a number of years being a popular tourist attraction in the 1970s. Sadly, the castle's decline came in the 1980s for a number of reasons. One is, it attracted scooterists from across Britain and some behaved in an antisocial manner, causing considerable damage. The castle was closed to the public and was subsequently owned by a number of businesses who promised renovation and great things for the castle's future, but these plans did not come to be and the castle was further vandalised and looted. Thankfully, the castle's fortunes did change though and I'll tell you about that in just a moment, but first of all I'd like to show you the delightful gardens which were mostly planted by Lloyd Hesketh Bamford Hesketh's son, Robert Bamford Hesketh and his wife Ellen in the 1870s. I'm just having a look around the beautiful gardens that Robert and Ellen planted and up here you can see one of the monkey trees. This huge gothic style castle may not be that old, built around 1812 just after and it doesn't have any practical defences, but it is so beautiful, enchanting and it makes such an impact, it is so immense. It's certainly stolen my heart this place. In the 90s when this castle was basically just left to rot, actually a school boy went past and became fascinated with this place. His name was Mark, he was 11 years old and I mean he wrote letters to the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister of the time and really got interest in the castle. He has since done a hell of a lot for the place, he's set up a trust and this castle's now back in public ownership and slowly being restored bit by bit. I will add links on my blog post on my website to the castle trust so you can get involved and it'll tell you how to get here, come and visit if you'd like to. The point I have got to say, it's really cheap to get in here and there's a lot to see and do. Have a look around, lots of nice green places for a picnic, I definitely recommend coming here. The only point I would like to say is it's not really wheelchair access, I don't think you could get a wheelchair up here but otherwise it's a beautiful place. Okay, thank you guys for watching today and sharing my experience of exploring the castle. I do hope you've enjoyed it, please do hit the like button and subscribe to my channel and until next time, take care.