BODELWYDDAN CASTLE
Portrait Gallery and Haunted Victorian Manor Hotel
Set
on beautiful gentle hillside park land, with views of the North Wales
coast a few miles distant, Bodelwyddan Castle is what
is sometimes referred to as a Victorian Folly, an building having no
purpose but for decoration, but Bodelwyddan Castle is more than that,
though taking in a variety of ornamental styles peculiar to Victorian
era revival. The original manor house dating from the 1400s was extensively
added to and redesigned first in the 1830s and again the 1880s a sign
of the wealth of the Williams family from local lead mining, Sir John
Hay Williams hired the man who’d designed the ubiquitous Hansom
Cab familiar from many a Sherlock Holmes story, Joseph Hansom, and another
popular architect Edward Welch to refurbish the castle in an impressive
style adding gothic arches, fake archery slits, decorative towers and
crenellated faux battlements.
The
fortunes of the Williams family owners had so declined by the turn
of the century
that the house was used as a hospital in WWI and the grounds
as a training area for trench warfare. In 1920 the house was taken over
by Lowther College, a private school which closed in 1982. Bodelwyddan
Castle was put into the hands of a trust with the main manor now housing
a branch of the British National Portrait
Gallery, displaying portraits in its magnificent Victorian rooms from
the National Museum in London with furniture on loan from the Victoria & Albert
Museum, and sculpture from the
Royal Academy. The Portrait Gallery is open to the public for most of
the year.
On the
extensive
grounds
are
beautiful Victorian Gardens designed by Thomas Hayton Mawson in 1910
entered through a notable arch of Wisteria with a maze and an aviary.
Further afield can be found the practice trenches remaining from World
War I as part of the nearby Camp Kinmel training grounds.
Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel
Separate from the public portrait rooms of Williams Hall, Bodelwyddan Castle is also hotel, leased in 1994 as part of the Warner Leisure Hotel group of upscale hotels in Grade Listed properties. The hotel features elegant rooms and suites in a castle hotel setting within a half hour of the Victorian seaside resort of Llangollen, the Snowdonia Mountains and the great medieval castles of North Wales. Civil Weddings can be arranged at the castle in a choice of three of the grand Victorian rooms.
Haunted Bodelwyddan
Bodelwyddan
is of note for its hauntings, featured on the British TV ghost show “Most
Haunted”. Many ghostly happenings have been
reported over the years, including random shadowy figures in the halls,
a World War I soldier in one of the portrait galleries, and a lady hovering
around the Sculpture Gallery and perhaps the same woman or another in
blue in the Tea Room. Bodelwyddan’s ghosts go mostly unidentified
as much of the house’s history records were lost in a fire in the
1920s. Some spooky speculation comes from bones which were discovered
within the walls during the reconstruction in the 1830s, with the bones
still remaining bricked into the wall. The hotel at Bodelwyddan offers
some overnight paranormal investigation experiences and ghost walks,
as well a dancing breaks and spooky family sleepovers.
Events
The grounds of the Bodelwyddan Cstle in Denbighshire host a variety of events, notably North Wales' largest Medieval Festival held the second weekend in August and with the castle's ties to warfare, British military recruiting fairs. © Bargain Travel Europe
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Bodelwyddan
Castle Museum
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SEE ALSO:
RUTHIN
CASTLE HOTEL - GHOSTS & MEDIEVAL BANQUETS
LLANGOLLEN
STEAM RAILWAY
LLANGOLLEN CAR MUSEUM COLLECTION
DINEFWR CASTLE PARK AND NEWTON HOUSE
