Hay Castle News

Lots of stuff going on at the Castle at the moment.

Richard Suggett, the Senior Investigator for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales has been closely involved in the project to restore Hay Castle since 2011, will be giving a talk about the castle during Hay Festival. He'll be talking about the history of the Castle, new dating techniques, and some of the early tenants of the Hay lordship. These include Maestorglwyd in Llanigon, where the house has been dated to 1420 with a new isotopic dating technique.
The talk will be on Tuesday 28th May at 5.30pm and is Event 194 in the Festival programme.

The Castle has also been working with local company BWA to design all the signage and information that will be going up around the Castle when it re-opens to the public. It won't just be a few signboards - they're planning books, sounds, audio-visual and tactile elements. These will tie in with the historical research that's been going on, and the school projects, talks, events and consultations that the Castle have been running.
One account of life in the Castle is by Bramwell Bradley, who started as a houseboy in 1928, when Lady Glenusk was in residence. He stayed at the Castle until 1938, when Lady Glenusk died, and he was the last person to leave the house, locking the gate behind him.
The Victorian stable buildings to one side of the Castle are going to be used as start-up units for small businesses, thanks to a grant from the Brecon Beacons National Park Sustainable Development Fund. Several Hay businesses started off there, including 18 Rabbit, The Thoughtful Gardener, Bain & Murrin's Emporium and the sadly missed Beer Revolution, as well as a variety of small bookshops.

There are also plans to rebuild the gables that were destroyed in the 1939 fire - there were plans to rebuild soon after the fire, until the Second World War meant that people had different priorities. However, someone gathered together the surviving stones from the gables, and stored them - and they have now been found, under the rubble where the Jacobean staircase used to stand!

And while building work is going on, the workers are also being careful to protect any bats that might be living in the walls. They have a bat expert on site, who is identifying any places bats may be roosting, and filling in the spots where there are no bats to be found, so that the builders can go ahead. They have also built some new bat accommodation.