The best castle in North Wales: Round 3: Gwydir and Penrhyn

Today’s ‘castles’ are Gwydir and Penrhyn. Neither is a true castle, the former being the ambitious house of the Wynn family and the latter a massive piece of Georgian medievalism.

I will make one comment for each castle beneath the post. The winner of a round will be the comment with the most upvotes. For competition purposes upvotes on other comments will not be taken into consideration, but all discussion is welcomed.

The result of the second round was a resounding win for Conwy over Beaumaris, at 124 votes to 19. 

Gwydir

For nearly 200 years Gwydir was the home of the Wynn family. The founder of the family, Maredudd ap Ieuan, moved from Eifionydd  to the Lledr Valley in about 1489 to avoid his feuding kinsmen, initially occupying Dolwyddelan Castle. In about 1500 he bought Gwydir from Hywel Coetmor and either began or completed the house there. His descendants expanded the house and were also responsible for several other important buildings in the area, including Plas Mawr in Conwy, Llanrwst Bridge, and Capel Gwydir Uchaf. After Sir Richard Wynn died in 1674 the house passed by marriage to the Duke of Ancaster and entered a period of decline. It became the seat of Lord Gwydyr in the late eighteenth century, and although he restored the main buildings he also tore down the timber framed wings that formerly enclosed a courtyard. The house was almost completely gutted in two separate fires in 1922 and 1924, however the hall block survived and the rest of the building has been restored since the 1950s.

The building history of the house is quite complicated, so I won’t attempt to explain it in detail (the RCAHMW link below contains one). Some of the most interesting features are the first-floor hall, which may be one of the earliest in north west Wales; the former courtyard plan, which is rare in the region; and that the house incorporates material from Maenan Abbey, which stood downriver on the other side of Llanrwst until the dissolution of the monasteries. The interiors were of high quality, as evidenced by the surviving elements. Remarkably, Gwydir’s seventeenth-century dining room survives because it was removed in 1921 and sold to the American William Randolph Hearst, who subsequently bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was purchased back by the current owners with the help of Cadw and reinstated in 1998. The oak parlour, which was sold at the same time, is still missing.

• Coflein listing (with pre-fire images)
• RCAHMW: An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Caernarvonshire: East (p. 185)
• Castles of Wales

Penrhyn

If Gwydir is complicated because of its building history, Penrhyn is complicated because of its builders. Although the castle is a medieval hall-house in origin (part the chapel and a staircase survive) it was rebuilt and massively enlarged for George Dawkins-Pennant primarily between 1822 and 1837. The Pennants were heavily involved in the slave trade through their plantations in the West Indies, and both George and his uncle Richard, from whom he inherited Penrhyn, were strong opponents of abolitionism. George also opposed the Reform Act 1832, which expanded the franchise and reformed the electoral system. His descendants opposed the labour movement, with the ‘Great Strike’ on the estate’s huge Penrhyn quarry being a key moment in the early history of the movement.

Given all of the above it’s difficult to look at the castle neutrally, however it is a very impressive and singular piece of architecture by Thomas Hopper; the closest parallel might be Gosford Castle, an earlier design by Hopper located in County Armagh. Located in an elevated position, its silhouette can be seen from a large part of the surrounding coast and has Eryri as a backdrop. The Norman style was chosen to give an air of antiquity, as it pre-dates the Gothic used in Edward I’s castles, and overall it’s one of the most convincing nineteenth-century castles. This is due in part to its enormous size, but also to the high quality of the masonry; the keep in particular is very effective. Internally, the best rooms are probably the hall and the staircase. The former is a vast space that feels like part of a cathedral, and the latter includes a riot of Romanesque decoration. The staircase is so idiosyncratic that it seems difficult to describe; the National Trust guidebook calls parts Norse, whereas Pevsner thinks it has Indian qualities. Either way, it’s the highlight of an ambitious house.

• Coflein listing
• National Trust site

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