Abandoned Gwrych Castle – North Wales, UK

Gwrych Castle was built in the early 1800s as the home of Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh.

It is said that Queen Victoria visited once before taking the throne.

It had a total of 128 rooms, including 28 bedrooms, an outer hall, an inner hall, two smoke rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, a billiards room, an oak study, and a range of accommodations for servants.

During World War II, it housed 200 Jewish refugees, and was later open to the public as a theme park complete with a zoo.

Gwrych Castle was built between 1810 and 1825 by Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh (1787–1861), in memory of his mother Frances Lloyd and her ancestors.

It incorporated an earlier house that had been in the ownership of the Lloyds since the late-medieval period.

From 1894 until 1924, Winifred, Countess of Dundonald, the Hesketh heiress, owned the estate and it became the residence of the Earls of Dundonald (family name of Cochrane).

The countess left the castle in her will to King George V and the then Prince of Wales (who later became Edward VIII).

However, the gift was refused and the castle passed to the Venerable Order of Saint John.

In 1928, the 12th Earl of Dundonald purchased the castle for £78,000 (equivalent to £4,700,000 in 2019), selling the contents to meet the cost.

Gwrych Castle became known as “The Showpiece of Wales” and attracted many visitors.

It was also used as a training venue for the English World Middleweight boxing champion Randolph Turpin in the early 1950s.

Recent Times

The castle closed to the public in 1987, and it started to decline.

It was bought in 1989 by Nick Tavaglione, an American businessman, for £750,000.

However, his plans to renovate the building were not carried out.

As a result, the castle was extensively looted and vandalised, and became little more than a derelict shell, although it was used in 1996 as the backdrop for Prince Valiant, a film starring Edward Fox, Joanna Lumley and Katherine Heigl.

It is currently open for guided and self-guided tours, but part of the site is closed as unsafe.

On 13 June 2018, Gwrych Castle and its estate was sold to Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, a registered charity, enabled by a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

In August 2020 it was rumoured that ITV had chosen the castle for the filming of the 20th series of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

This was confirmed on 27 August after Gwrych publicly confirmed this on their social media sites.

Giovanna Fletcher was crowned the first-ever Queen of the Castle at the end of the series.

In 1994, arsonists had destroyed power-lines by setting an old caravan alight. After the trust secured enough funds to pay for it, in June 2021 a new transformer and pole were installed.

In August 2021, ITV confirmed that I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! would be returning to Gwrych for the second time, ensuring that further funds would help restore the castle.