Touring Inside the Castle

We entered the Castle by the door from the lawn (or at least, it will be a lawn again fairly soon), but there there will be a second entrance at the top of the steps from the Honesty Garden.  This will lead directly into the King of Hay Bookshop, and off to the side down the corridor is the counter for the cafe - the kitchen being at the end of the corridor.  

Across the way is the big room that has been used in recent years for events, and that will be the cafe.  There was a plan to turn the stable block into the cafe, but that's been put on the back burner for now.  When the Castle re-opens next year, the buildings round the yard will be retail units as they were before.

Upstairs, there are offices and toilets (there's an accessible toilet near the cafe counter on the ground floor), and one room has been kitted out with a lot of storage space for educational purposes.  The Hay Castle Trust got a grant from the Clore Duffield Foundation to set it up.  The Foundation only has two other educational rooms in Wales, both of them at St Fagans.  The idea is that it will be used by school groups, or local groups like Local History Societies, and so forth, and will be suitable for talks, courses and workshops of various kinds.

One part of the first floor has been re-inforced, because a printing press is going to be installed there!  It's the one that is, at present, in the cafe at Booth Books, and they are hoping to have people there who can work it, and encourage visitors to have a go.

Upstairs again, what was once the attic space is now going to be an area with comfy chairs where members of the public can go to quietly read - there will also be displays showing the history of the castle, including oral history (for instance, an interview with one of the firemen who helped to put out the 1977 fire).  I think this may be where the historical costumes will be, too.

On the other side of the building, the room has been reinforced with steel mesh in the walls and ceiling, to make it as impregnable as they can so that top art galleries will be able to loan displays.  The first exhibition planned for the space will be a collection of portraits of authors, from the National Portrait Gallery.  

And then we were heading up again to the top of the tower, where the new viewing platform is:

It's easy to see why the Castle was built in that spot!