GWRYCH CASTLE

HX Suggested Reasons to Visit

Explore the hidden tunnels, breathtaking sea vistas, and its fame as the "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" set.

About

Gwyrch, meaning ‘hedged castle’ has medieval origins, but the house that stands today was built between 1812 and 1822 by the gentry landowner Lloyd Bamford-Hesketh with the architect Thomas Rickman, in memory of his mother, whose family the Lloyds had owned an earlier house there since the medieval period. With Rickman’s eye, Gwrych became a Gothic Revival castle, by then the height of architectural fashion.

In 1894, Lloyd Bamford-Heskeht’s granddaughter Winifred, Countess of Dundonald inherited Gwyrch. Her marriage to Douglas Cochrane, 12th Earl of Dundonald was not successful, and she spent much of her time at Gwyrch rather than with him while he was away in Canada with the army during the early 20th century. The castle remained Winifred’s own, and she had plenty of friends to stay at Gwrych, including Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein  in 1901. When she died in 1924 the house was offered to George V as a residence for the Prince of Wales. The royal family rejected the offer, and instead Gwyrch passed to Church in Wales, before in 1928 it was bought back by Winifred’s estranged husband Douglas Cochrane, 12th Earl of Dundonald, claiming his former had gone mad, and who sold the contents to afford the £70,000 price tag. No member of the Dundonald family ever lived at Gwrych again.

During the Second World War the house was used to house 200 Jewish refugees, part of the Kindertransport programme, and post-war the Dundonalds sold the estate to a Robert Rennie, who opened it to the public. It was later sold again to Leslie Salts, during this period attracting 10 million visitors and employing 200 people. After Salts sold it in 1968, the castle fell into decline, garnering a reputation for attracting drunkenness and antisocial behaviour, partly owing to the many motorcyclists who visited it, and Gwrych closed to the public in 1987. 

It declined further, being looted and vandalised, stripped of its slate and lead from the roof, and its fittings. All the while the historian Dr Mark Baker, who grew up nearby, had been campaigning for the preservation of Gwyrch. In 1997, as a 12-year-old, he formed the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, whose aim was the ensure the castle’s future. Finally, in 2018, the preservation trust bought the castle and its estate, helped by a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Today, the castle is open to the public and in the care of the preservation trust, though most of it is a ruin.

Featured in