Rival Reviews: Penrhyn Castle
This mock castle does not take the mick.
It’s not a movie set, its the real (fake) deal.
At a distance, Penryhn Castle is the most well-preserved Norman castle I have ever seen. Its slate grey facade rises above the trees, imposing towers topped with the iconic ridged battlements and lined with slit windows, ready for conflict.
Something is off however, some windows are too big, and seem to be made with stained glass. There is no interior wall protecting the keep from invasion. There are also far too many entrances, making the settlement vulnerable. And of course, the whole place is in breathtakingly good nick, considering castle-building stopped around the 16th century.
Dubious impression of a scorpion aside, you would not catch stained glass in a bona fide castle.
Well there is good reason. Penrhyn was contrived in the 19th century by the architect Thomas Hopper in the charmingly-named ‘Neo-norman’ style for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, a local noble. This stylistic choice was perhaps as a result of the land's medieval origins, though certainly many landed estates have such credentials and relatively few acknowledge them in such overt a fashion, usually favouring a ruined castle in the grounds as a comparatively subtle hint of their far reaching historical street cred.
The story of this Welsh fortress starts much further from home however, and four generations earlier. The Pennants fortune was made from 1658 onwards, when Gifford Pennant arrived as an early settler in Jamaica. Sugar was in huge demand all across Europe at this time, as demand for sweet treats grew. Gifford was in the perfect place to capitalise on this demand, scoring high profits from low production costs aided by the use of slave labour.
Gifford had succeeded in creating a plantation over twenty times larger than the average. His son, Edward, managed to build on his success, expanding the family's plantations and dividing the land between his three sons in turn. It was unusual that an early settler had survived so long as to have descendants. Many earlier travellers succumbed to the hot climate, or one of the various tropical diseases on offer. Gifford’s grandchildren, Samuel, John and Henry moved back to Britain in the 1730’s however, and when Henry and Samuel died unmarried, their shares of the family fortune passed to John, who had married a Welsh heiress and her family's estate in Penrhyn in the meantime, and as such his own son, Richard, came to inherit almost all the Penrhyn estate and the complete Pennant fortune in 1781.
Upon securing his fortunes, our little moneybags turned his attention to improving his new Welsh estate. He diversified his portfolio by investing in mining for slate, the metamorphic rock that North Wales is primarily composed of, creating a quarry so large there has been none to match it anywhere in the world. With the proceeds he built up the local community and infrastructure, including Port Penrhyn, roads, railways, schools, hotels, workers’ houses, churches and farms. In any spare moment, he also campaigned against the abolition of slavery, presumably as an owner and absentee landlord he could only see its gain. Nice bloke.
Richard, like his great grandfather before him, saw an opportunity to make money, and in doing so, like his great grandfather before him, brought great pain the likes of which can never be reserved to the local populace and the natural environment. Though slate was being quarried in Wales since the 15th century, a lack of infrastructure kept it small-scale. It was no coincidence that sugar-plantation funded roads soon began to pop up when Richard came onto the scene, and production increased rapidly.
Richard was a canny operator, when a war with France meant that taxes were imposed on slate exports for some reason and demand took a dive, he remeployed his redundant workers to build an iron tramway to better move the rock, he also had Port Penrhyn deepened to accommodate larger ships. When the war ended, the mine was ready and waiting, becoming the largest and most productive in the world. Let it not escape notice that this could not have been achieved without the capital already raised off the backs of slaves.
At home on his estate, A fortified manor house had already been standing on the Penrhyn land since the 15th century, when the founder of the estate built it. This house had stayed more or less as is until Richard inherited the estate in the 1780s. In short order, he had the house remodelled by Samuel Wyatt, who you might remember as an architect at Tatton Hall. Wyatt retained the style of the house, but added some battlements and turrets for pizazz at Richard’s request.
By 1805, Richard Pennant was the sole owner of the Jamaican plantations, still making money hand over fist with a workforce of over 1000 enslaved people, the owner of the largest slate quarry the world had ever seen and the proprietor of the Penrhyn land, becoming the 1st Baron Penrhyn. By 1808, he was dead.
The very dining table from which the Penannts were forced to eat while seeing a painting of some poor people.
Richard had only had a daughter, so his house passed onto his second cousin, George Hay Dawkins. Dawkins quickly suffixed his name with ‘Pennant’ and moved straight in. Though it was only 30 years since the last renovations, when George inherited the estate in the early 19th century, the entire house was fobbed off and replaced with the huge castle we can see today. The redo cost roughly 100 million pounds. Luckily, when, despite Richard Penant’s best efforts, slavery was abolished in 1833, the compensation George received for losing his plantation was roughly £18 million in modern currency, received as Penrhyn Castle was nearing completion. What a consolation.
The construction lasted from 1820-1837, and George could only enjoy his creation for three years before he himself died in 1840. The estate passed to his wife and son-in-law, and continued down the Pennant line until in the early 20th century, relations between the family and their workers in the slate quarries began to sour. The dispute began in 1900, revolving round truly outrageous demands like pay and rights of the workers. The clash between the owners and the family resulted in the Great Strike, which lasted from 1900 to 1903. The workers eventually returned to work under George Sholto’s, the 3rd Lord Penrhyn terms, broken into submission.
And so life in North Wales continued, the 3rd Lord was succeeded by his own son and the 4th Lord by his, until in 1949 when the land and the title were separated. The title went to Frank Douglas Pennant, who became fifth Lord Penrhyn, and the land went to the fourth Lord’s niece, Lady Janet Harper. It was only in 1951 that Penrhyn Castle came into the hands of the National Trust in lieu of death duties. A house for a life.
As intimidating as they were in 1066, just ignore the cafe signage.
So what of the house? For the last 200 years, Penrhyn Castle had stood solid, but what else could you expect from such a construction? George Hay Dawkins Pennant had employed Thomas Hooper, an eminent architect and much favoured by King George IV. Despite his experience, Penrhyn was one of Hopper’s first full commissions, before now he had stuck mainly to alterations, with a foray once before into the Norman revival style at Gosford, County Armagh. To be fair to the man, Penrhyn takes the cake.
Penrhyn is based loosely on the motte and bailey castle, introduced by William the Conqueror after the Norman conquest of 1066 as a quick fire way to consolidate the new foreign population as England’s ruling authority. The castle’s were created to be built easily by unskilled workers, first out of wood but eventually constructed using local stone. Though foreign to the British landscape at the time, they stand today as one of our most iconic constructions, though the vast majority lie in ruin or completely eradicated, leaving only foundations.
Which is why if there is one thing you must know first about Penrhyn Castle. From the first glance I am enchanted with this property. Having grown up visiting these ruinous remains of castle keeps, walls and mounds, this building is wish fulfilment. Larger than life and twice as high, it's bloody enormous and very, very castley.
Words don’t do this justice.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood when I arrive with Kay, my Welsh local guide, though we’re a bit late to the party due to a sat nav error. At the gate we show our cards for entry and are introduced to the possibility of taking a small tour in the upper levels of the keep, it’s not usually open to the public and it’s only £3 each so before Kay can say either way if she’d like to take part I’ve paid for us both.
Tickets in hand, we have an hour to explore the property before we must present ourselves for tourin. The wie lane to the entrance offers panoramic views over the bay, mountains and the house itself, imposing above us on a slight hill. Kay likes the sheep more.
We pass through an entrance gate and walk the length of the property to reach the start of the tour, this is ample time for Penrhyn to throw itself in our faces. One criticism levelled at the Norman-revival style is that it ignores how castles are first and foremost a fortification, and thus border on being too fancy to be viably conflict-proof. Now here, it is clear to see that this criticism does not apply to Penrhyn; it is so castley it almost feels fake, like a movie set. The grey facade is unadorned, keeping only the hallmarks of Norman design, square and hexagonal shapes, battlements, small windows etc. The house feels heavy, a bit villainesque if anything.
Almost church-like in its vastness, the hall is regal in its splendour.
The fantastical facade also carries through to the interior. Hopper had a hand in interior decorations, objects and furniture, and the result is extravagant, and huge fun. One of the first things we see in the entrance passage is a lamp shaped like a wolf’s head. I mean, come on!
There is one difference between exterior and interior. If the relatively plain outside retains some sombre semblance of the Norman spirit, the inside is nothing short of a gothic fantasy, calling to mind legends of old; knights, dragons, princesses in a tower. It’s giving King Arthur.
In fact, the inside spaces are vast and luxurious, each room yields an opulence that seems to outpace what came before it. The grand staircase in particular makes your breath catch. Exquisite seems to plain a word. The craftsmanship of the plasterer is fantastical. Lit by a skylight from above, it calls to mind classical architecture. We were lucky to have visited on a sunny day.
Another standout was the Lower India room, with exquisite hand painted 19th century chinoiserie wallpaper. The name may throw you off but, we were informed that any country in India’s general direction was considered generally similar and thus included in the room. The hand carved furniture originated from Sri Lanka and the ceramics from China and Japan.
A gothic light fixture if ever I’ve seen one.
The house is full of fun touches - hidden doors lead to spiral stairs that look straight from the 11th century, and the upstairs corridor that looks over the hall is ended with a large mirror that creates the illusion the corridor is much longer than it is. The sheer vastness of the space made me all too willing to believe at first glance. Most of the high vaulted ceilings are intricately decorated with celtic-inspired plasterwork, and finished with small grotesques that glare down onto the room's occupants. One of my absolute favourite decorative touches was a light fixture shaped like an arm protruding from a lion's mouth. So gothic, SO cool. The sheer volume of little touches feels joyful, infusing the home with playfulness.
There are also callbacks to the slate industry that helped raise such a property. Slate sinks in the kitchen, slate tiles on the floor in the courtyard, and lining flower beds in the walled garden. A one ton slate bed in a state bedroom. Paintings of wholesome men hard at work in the quarry line the walls of the dining room. Apparently these were removed during a workers strike, the family too disgusted to look at them when eating their dinner.
The slate bed, it could almost be mistaken for ebony in a certain light, but that shine gives it away.
After wandering round in admiration for the better part of an hour, we returned to the main hall for our tour. Led by a volunteer, the delightful Alun, eight visitors at a time are permitted entrance to the as of yet unfinished upper floors of the keep. Only the first floor is open for exploration in full 18th century garb as of now, with the ground, second and third floors in varying states of disrepair.
It’s a fascinating sojourn behind the scenes, those state rooms are a state, to be sure, but it is refreshing to see nonetheless. So often country houses can be curated to the point of perfection, which almost inevitably leaves them with an air of stagnation, at risk of glorifying a past that needs careful consideration. Seeing the cracked and battered walls and various detritus held in the upper floors is a reminder that this conservation work is valuable, and remarkable. I admire the National Trust’s candour here, and the commitment to historical education that it takes to take visitors into ‘off-limit’ areas and explain their history. Alun was a succinct and interesting guide. I complain often when I cannot view as much of a house as I would like, this seems an elegant solution. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to be. Worth the £3, I would even charge more.
The upper story of the keep. It’s a fixer upper.
After this we have time for a quick go round the walled garden, an elegant enclosed space set into the slope with a formal parterre and lily ponds at the highest level and a bog garden at the bottom. We have little time to linger sadly, it’s almost closing time, and so we hustle back to the carpark, walking again along the length of the castle, for old times sake.
And so we take our leave. It’s been a quiet day at Penrhyn Castle this sunny Sunday, we had most showrooms to ourselves, and there was no queue at the café. As far as I’m concerned, everyone else missed out.
Lunch
No lunch - we got a bit lost on our way and ran out of time before our 2pm tour.
Is the cafe in the kitchen or the stables?
Kitchen! The cafe acts as a brief interlude between the main house and the servants wing, a fun change of pace.
Can I take my dog?
Not in the castle but there is a small walled garden and general grounds perfect for a wander.
Can I take my kids?
Kids will love the castle vibes, but there aren’t any cool things like dungeons. Be prepared to let them down gently on that front!
Well, what did you think?
This is such a fun house. I love love love it. I mean, surely it is a paradox? The world that exists inside Penrhyn could never really have existed in the time that is emulated, the pocket universe we stand in is a product of its own time as much as it seeks to replicate another. As such it is neither, it’s own beautiful enigma. There is fun round every corner and more detail than I could possibly touch here. I feel like I really hammered home how castley the property is. But it is! Go and you will see what I mean, there’s no other word for it.
Having said this however, I would have liked more information about the house itself in the guidebook. As is the trend in National Trust properties, physical interpretation is kept to a minimum, presumably to keep the immersion intact, but there are so many unique, whimsical touches in the house it feels like a missed opportunity. Though we must acknowledge what was not missed. One thing that features heavily in the Penrhyn guidebook but hardly at all in the house itself is the dark side of the fortune that funded its opulence. I am not surprised to see little in the house itself, the Pennant family fell out of the sugar trade in 1833 when slavery was abolished, and Richard was an absentee landlord, running his plantation from afar. The cruelty and horror that sit at the base of their fortune must have felt very removed indeed. I also do not envy Penrhyn Castle for having to balance the whimsy and skill of the property with the ugly truth of its foundations, both in sugar and slate. The National Trust website suggests this work is ongoing, and I am interested to see the direction in which this takes us. Such a beautiful place deserves nothing less.