I’m a Celeb Special: Gwrych Castle

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

Gwrych Castle dominates the road into North Wales. A sprawling Victorian ruin on land that belonged to the same family for over 500 years. It is now famous in the UK as the Covid convenient set for "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" which launched to huge audiences this weekend. But history fans will be more interested in the the remarkable story of the castle itself than the antics of the celebs in its shadow. From an illustrious stately home, and safe haven for dozens of child refugees it fell on hard times, was stripped for its materials and came close to complete collapse. The fact that it survives at all is thanks to one very remarkable young boy, Mark Baker. In this episode of the podcast Dan visits the castle and talks to Mark about the history, and how he saved it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hip. We've got an IMA celebrity get me out of
0:05.2	his special. For those of you overseas who don't know, that is the show in which they lock
0:10.1	up a bunch of celebrities, previously in a lovely Australian rainforest, but now thanks to
0:15.6	COVID, in the confines of an ancient ruinous castle, here in Good Old Britain. The castle
0:23.2	isn't just any old castle, you've heard it on this podcast before, obviously folks, I keep
0:28.4	up to speed on what's going on in the world. This is Gurek Castle, an amazing Victorian castle.
0:34.0	Now ruined, it looks out over Liverpool Bay, the wonderful Northwest corner where England meets
0:41.8	Wales, where the mighty rivers, the D, the Ribble, the Mercy, and many others empty out into the Irish
0:49.3	Sea. It sits Hanescottment, they're dominating Edward I invasion route west into Gwyneth into
0:56.0	North Wales, where my family are from, by the way, so we take these things very seriously.
1:00.2	It's the route I say over the first, the Romans were taken from Chester up along the North
1:05.3	Coast of Wales to Anglesey and then put the first at it during his invasions in later centuries.
1:10.8	The site was owned by the Lloyd family, who were the ancestral owners of Gurek, apparently for
1:16.3	a thousand years, remarkable in the 19th century, Lloyd Heskith Bamford Heskith, who was the high
1:24.3	sheriff of Denbyshire. He built kind of mock early Sir Victorian Gothic Castle high on the
1:29.5	escarpment there. It was then one of the prime houses of 19th century England and Wales for generations,
1:35.6	but it fell on hard times subsequently as you'll hear in this podcast and ended up ruinous,
1:41.2	completely destroyed, stripped for the lead and the building materials that scavengers could prize
1:46.8	from its craggy walls. Until that it was rescued by a schoolboy. This is truly one of the most
1:54.4	remarkable stories I have come across in history since I've been doing this podcast. A wonderful young
2:01.0	man, Mark Baker, who grew up in a nearby school, saved the castle in a way that you're about to hear.
2:07.5	In this episode of history, I visit Gurek Castle, got underneath the security fence, ITV didn't stop me,
	...

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