This is something of a semi-failure, as we didn't get to explore the entire building. But that is the nature of this game. I flat-out refuse to force entry into a place, even if it is derelict, and as such a lot of my adventures are duds. However, I don't blog about those ones.
Nevertheless, Kinmel Hall is one of the most attractive buildings I have ever visited. It's also probably one of the biggest. It's palatial in scale and thought to be the largest surviving country house of its kind in all of Wales.
The Kinmel Hall adventure is important in that it brought together a whole bunch of adventurers and bloggers from Shropshire. I teamed up for the very first time with Team Desolate Decay, who run a blog similar to mine. If you're reading this on a PC, there will be a list of links on the side to other local adventure bloggers, but just in case you're viewing on a mobile, I'll link to the Desolate Decay blog here. Desolate Decay actually approached me for a team up, but the approach was understandably very tentative at first, given that people in our line of work (Forbidden Tourism) don't always follow the same code of ethics. I've experienced this myself, being personally against breaking in, and theft, and vandalism, but have witnessed urban explorers doing all those things. However once I Desolate Decay and I met, and hit the road (Not literally because that would hurt), we got along splendidly.
Shortly after we left Kinmel Hall, it was quite coincidentally visited by two other urban explorers from Shropshire, who we knew from Instagram, Matt of "Grand Declines" and Kelsey of "One Last Look" who messaged me shortly after we'd gone to tell us that they were currently there. I ended up meeting them a few weeks later, and eventually we all teamed up for a revisit to Kinmel Hall, along with my occasional sidekick, Tree Surgeon, who hasn't come with me on adventures in aaaages because he's currently raising the baby that I put into his wife when he wasn't watching.
Okay, Okay, I'm joking. I'm not that evil.
I totally let him watch.
But I digress! We ended up with a group of seven of us, which is six more humans than I'm used to adventuring with, usually running solo. Nevertheless, we all got on, which is a rare treat for me, given my usual lifestyle as a social recluse, and prior negative experiences with urban explorers before. It was nice to have multitudes of people from Shropshire who do the same thing as me meeting up and having fun. And no, this isn't all of the Shropshire adventurers. The Worralls are just one example of two people I would love to have had join us, and there are others. It's becoming something of a community, although it's important to mention that while we have similar ethics, we also have different areas of preference within the umbrella-term that is Urban Exploration. I highly doubt Desolate Decay will be crawling up storm drains with me, and I'm fairly certain I'll never get Kelsey climbing a church spire. Even on one of my own adventures with Brother Michael, he saw more of interest in an empty shell of a building, in which he analysed and decoded the history based on the brickwork and architecture, but had not so much interest in the one I found more fascinating, the fully furnished bungalow.
It's a very diverse hobby. That's why I love it.
In spite of the warning signs, there were no dogs on the site. Prior explorations of this place that have popped up on Youtube show automated loudspeakers connected to CCTV that warn intruders that their faces have been captured on camera, as well as a record player playing eerily in the empty mansion, to give the impression that it's occupied. However none of that was here anymore.
This impressive building dates back to the 1870s but is actually the third to stand on this site, with images of an earlier mansion dating back to the 1790s. I'll add one of those to the blog, for the sake of completion.
While the mansion is set in a walled garden of around eighteen acres, this is all part of a larger estate called Kinmel Park, which was itself some 5000 acres of land, including woods, parkland and open fields.The estate had its origins when two rich people I've never heard of, Piers Holland I and Catherine Lloyd, got married and united their collective property as one massive estate. Records from 1699 call this place "Kinmael" which sounds considerably more gaelic, although even that is probably an evolution on the original, seeing as the Welsh alphabet doesn't have a K.
The land was purchased by Rev Edward Hughes in 1786. He was just a lowly curate in Anglesey when he fell in love with the daughter of his employer, Mary Lewis. Marys uncle had died, and left her a house in Anglesey along with a barren hill nearby. It turned out that the barren hill was in fact the site of a colossal copper mine, half of which was owned by Henry Paget, the 1st Marquess of Anglesey, a formidable chap who later lost his leg in the battle of Waterloo. His family lineage is pretty spectacular. He was in later years the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but his Irish heritage came from his Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, who was actually English but fled to Ireland in 1538 to escape justice for killing a man in Staffordshire.
But I digress.
Ultimately, Edward Hughes found himself marrying into quite the money pit, given that his wife had inherited half of a copper mine. The mine was huge, employing 1,500 people, and Edward Hughes and the Marquess split between them upwards of £300,000 a year, which was a huge amount of money back in the 1780s. According to an online inflation calculator, in 2018 this is the equivalent of roughly £52,298,660. Needless to say, this allowed Edward Hughes the means to purchase Kinmel, and rebuild the mansion into its second incarnation.
Edward Hughes died in 1815, the same year that the Marquess lost his leg, and Kinmel fell into the hands of his son, William Lewis Hughes, MP for Wallingford, and all-around saint. He was ADC to Queen Victoria, Colonel of the Anglesey Militia, and a champion for the poor, opening Kinmel Park to educate local girls for free in 1830. He died in 1852 and Kinmel fell into the hands of his son, who also inherited his fathers name, but apparently not his skills in the bedroom, because he totally failed to reproduce, and died only eight months after his father. With no children to inherit the estate, Kinmel passed to Williams nephew, Hugh Robert Hughes.
It was under Hughs ownership that the hall was rebuilt into what stands today.
The current mansion was known as a Calendar House due to having 365 windows. It had 52 main bedrooms, and rooms for 60 servants. Of its many rooms, one was also used specifically for the ironing of newspapers to ensure that the ink did not rub off. And if that seems like a silly function to dedicate an entire room too, remember that this was the eccentric Victorian era, and that some people are so rich that they don't know what to do with all that money.
Hugh was apparently a big spender. Among his many antics that would have cost him vast quantities, he had Queen Victoria herself come and stay in 1870. She gifted Hugh with some fantastically carved wooden panels that ended up decorating the mantle of a fireplace in the hall.
But really, Hughs extravagant lifestyle was so excessive that his spending coupled with the death duties of his predecessors meant that by the time of his death in 1911, the estate was significantly smaller than it was when he got it.
Of Hughs kids, the eldest, Hugh S.B Hughes was disowned following an affair and subsequent marriage to an actress that was not met with the approval of his posh Victorian family. His younger brother, Henry, inherited Kinmel.
The Hughes family stopped living here in 1929. Henry was a career soldier and seemingly didn't have time to put into the place. That's not to say it wasn't put to good use! It became a health spa for the treatment of people with rheumatism up until the outbreak of World War 2, when it became a military hospital. Henry Hughes himself died in 1940, having never spawned any children.
There's an old toaster casually left here, but I doubt it still works.
The mansions garden is impressive, including this massive fountain through which water no longer flows, but stagnates at the bottom. It has some nice ornamental cherubs and horses though, and with a little TLC would look pretty impressive.
The entire garden alone has so much potential.
With no children, Henry Hughes property was inherited by his sisters grandson, Major David Fetherstonhaugh, although Kinmel Hall still wasn't used residentially. After serving as a hospital after the war, it became a boys school right up until 1975 when it was closed down following a huge fire. It was restored by businessman Eddie Vince as a Christian Conference Centre, and holiday home.
David Fetherstonhaugh eventually died in 1994, and while most of the land remained in his family, the hall was sold in an auction in 2001 and again in 2011, but this was just the mansion and not any of the surrounding land once associated with it. The buildings most recent owner had plans to turn it into a hotel, but rumour has it she is currently in jail for something to do with drugs, and Kinmel Hall has been derelict ever since.
We found this frog though! How awesome is that?
When we arrived at Kinmel Hall, we found that something was finally happening to it. It's been derelict since 2011, but now a big truck with a foreign numberplate was parked outside, next to a bonfire of former furniture, and from the upper floors came the unmistakable sound of power tools.
It was the bonfire and truck that sealed the deal for us- What wasn't being destroyed was being taken away. And who knows what brutality is being committed upstairs! With the door hanging wide open, I concluded that now might be the last chance to see this place before it's altered beyond recognition.
We slipped inside, to see what we could before the workers upstairs noticed us and threw us out.
And just look! This place is gorgeous.
I didn't get around all of it before we were discovered. In fact I barely scraped the surface. Desolate Decay called me out of whatever nooks and crannies I was running down, and I emerged to the main hall to find him having a discussion with a few angry men on the stairs. We'd been discovered.
Desolate Decay attempted to reason with them, saying that he'd stayed here back when it was a Christian Conference Centre, and he wanted to see it one last time before it was gone. But the workers were having none of it, and they sent us on our way. However, they did tell us to come back in six months though, which was curious. Presumably by then whatever they'd been hired to do would be completed and they would be long gone and no longer accountable for trespass.
But in six months, what would be left?
I was pretty sad, watching the bonfire and the truck, and feeling that same sorrow that I felt during A Handmaids Tale when the government started blowing up churches in their attempt to erase history.
And yes, I should add the obvious, and say that all the stuff that happened to the women in A Handmaids Tale was awful too. In 2018, we're all walking on eggshells.
We were not to be defeated though. The workers were doing their thing in the main hall, but the servants quarters were just as gorgeous, and completely unguarded.
This block is allegedly older than the main hall, dating back to the 1850s, but still probably created under the orders of the big spender, Hugh Hughes.
The rooms of this area are labeled, including the Court Games Room which was full of clutter.
Among the clutter was this throne, made out of cheap material and presumably part of some stage show years ago, given that there's a small theatre nearby.
There's a dartboard with Homer Simpson on it.
Making our way around the building we found it stripped of furniture, but full of photogenic decay.
Nature is creeping in.
This room is amazing. Check this out!
This go-cart is made out of a bar stool, a fence post and wheelie bin wheels! That's so cool!
The court meeting room was similarly barren.
As was the kitchen.
This door, labeled Kinmel Link, would have connected this building to the rest of the hall, where we'd been previously caught. It was locked, which is a shame. It's a perfect way to sneak back in.
There's a golf club on the stairs.
I actually really love the upper floor of this block. It's barren but still containing its fireplaces and other signs of its earlier character.
This was clearly a communual toilet area at some point, given the remnants of sinks in the wall, and also the remnants of the now-absent toilets.
Presumably there would have been cubicle walls and, of course, actual toilets. But even absent, this toilet area is in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and nightclubs.
The actual clocktower was impressive, with this little desk, and the clock mechanism still intact.
This hall seemed to have multitudes of rooms connected to it, presumably once bedrooms when this was a Christian conference center.
This is the remains of the theatre, where numerous performances would have taken place. Most notably, a chap called Mike Peters, best known for his 1980s band The Alarm, rehearsed here back in the day. My friend, Brother Michael, described The Alarm with the phrase "If you asked them, they'd say they were a punk band, but if you asked a punk at the time what sort of music it was, they'd say it was shit."
Having listened to a few songs during the writing of this, personally I don't think they're that bad, but then Brother Michael is like Musical Hitler. If he had the power, 90% of musicians would be in concentration camps. If he says something is shit, chances are it probably isn't.
These are the old stables.
I'm pretty sure this building was also part of the servants quarters, but it is the most dilapidated part of the entire hall, and is pretty much a death trap. Naturally I went inside.
There's an oven up here but nobody can get to it.
On our second visit, the front door was locked but in our attempts to access the main hall, we ended up going up the stairwell at the side of the building. From there it was pretty simplistic to step off the stairwell onto this big stone ledge that circles the roof. However when I did so, I found everyone was looking at me like I was some kind of nutcase.
I mean sure, I am a bit eccentric, but look at this ledge! It's no narrower than any of the ledges I've crawled along while rooftopping in Shrewsbury. Sure, it's considerably taller than most of them but if anything, it's made further safer by the fact that one can lean against the slanted roof. My goal, of course, was to make my way around the building and find an unlocked upstairs window. And of course, check out the view.
As you can probably guess from the cloud cover, it was also raining, which added to the risk.
In the end it was Tree Surgeon who persuaded me to stop, telling me "You're not Indiana Jones," knowing full well that he's misquoting Teenage Me. I never claimed to be Indiana Jones, alright? I actually said that I was in Diana Jones. I was young. Young men brag about this sort of thing. Di, if you're reading this I'm sorry.
Look at this brickwork!
There was one final thing we needed to see before we left Kinmel Hall, and that was the outdoor swimming pool. Curiously, it doesn't show up on Victorian Era maps, although the hall and the garden are identical on those maps to how they are today. I think the swimming pool may have been a later addition, possibly during the buildings time as a health spa, given the nature of rheumatism.
A road leads out into the woods, where the old swimming pool can be found, fenced off, overgrown and stagnant. It's possible that a lot of visitors completely miss it now, focusing instead on trying to get into the main hall.
As we were leaving, we came across a man who was the former groundskeeper, and he seemed like a reasonable guy. He claimed that he'd fiercly protected the place from trespassers and urban explorers back when it was his job to do so, and he'd taken the job very seriously. Further research revealed that the wooden panels gifted by Queen Victoria were stolen by urban explorers in 2013, so it's totally understandable that the man left in charge of guarding it was protective. However, it seemed as though he'd been given the word to stand down, as he seemed largely apathetic of us being there when we spoke to him, not like the stern "Get off before I call the cops" chap that people describe. Of the current work being done to it, he seems to regard it with some suspicion, and revealed to us that while he was aware that people would be coming around to do work on Kinmel Hall in the near future, rather than ask him for the keys to the place, they simply smashed his car window to retrieve them from where he'd left them on the passenger seat.
Quite what he did about that is not known, but by the time we arrived he'd seemed to have accepted the fact that Kinmel Hall was no longer his problem.
Personally I think it's a pretty dodgy situation, and some people have drawn comparisons between Kinmel Hall and another hall in Cheshire, where the owner died and a cannabis farm was established there under the guise of "renovation." When the police found it, there was an estimated street value of £750,000. The following year the house was set on fire. These are, of course, scary implications for Kinmel Hall, which nobody can deny is being renovated under dodgy circumstances. But nobodies going to call the police on the people threatening to call the police, so in many ways it's a perfect crime. My hope is that it turns out to be more of a Pitchford Hall case, where the renovators give up and bugger off once the buildings listed status stops them making the changes that they want.
So what does the future hold? Plans were made in October 2018 to turn the surrounding land into some kind of Mega Dairy for some five hundred bovines. The plans were given the go-ahead by Dickon Featherstonhaugh, grandson of David Featherstonhaugh, so it seems that while the mansion was sold on, the surrounding land is still owned by the same family lineage that inherited the Kinmel Estate 200+ years ago.
Five hundred cows grazing the four hundred acres offered to the Mega Dairy over a course of nine months will produce 5,350 cubic meters of slurry and dirty water and as such, locals have objected to the plans, since the cattle will ultimately ruin one of Wales most treasured park lands. As well as a number of specimen trees, the parkland also allegedly contains the remnants of World War 1 practice trenches, and relics of the farmed landscape associated with the original Kinmel Hall, all of which could be preserved but will likely be ruined by the influx of cows and slurry. They also have concerns about traffic volumes, and the smell emitted by five hundred cows, the flies that they'll bring, the ammonia that will be produced and the potential for nitrogen pollution.
Dickon Featherstonhaugh, however, says that this project won't impact the mansion, or any of the popular views, and even has plans for an underground slurry tank. But this will have a storage capacity of 118 cubic meters, which is just six days of slurry. Nevertheless, they plan to use an automated roto-rain system similar to an irrigator that would silently spread slurry continuously throughout the night, and apparently this is more than sufficient.
Personally I don't want to see such countryside reduced to a mega dairy.
But really, that's all I have for this particular post on Kinmel Hall. Maybe someday I'll explore it fully but today I'm taking what I can get. As an adventure, it was constructive in that it brought together a number of adventurers from Shropshire with similar ethics, which is a rare treat. I don't have the added shame of taking someone adventuring only for them to piss in the kitchen sink while I facepalm in dismay. No, these are good people. And it's great that by doing similar things on the internet, a medium notorious for isolating people, we've come together as some kind of Shropshire Adventurer (for lack of a better term) community, and that opens up a tonne of opportunities as we can now trade leads like Pokemon cards.
With that in mind, I guess Desolate Decay has given me his Shiny Charizard.
I think if my other blog "Shrewsbury from where you are not" is a mainly solo thing, then this blog is going to be more of a team effort.
That's all I have today. Share this blog if you want. Next time I'll either be blogging about a place in Shropshire on my other blog or heading off to an abandoned house on this one. I haven't decided yet. In the meantime Like my Facebook, Follow my Instagram, Subscribe to my Youtube aaaand follow my Twitter.
And keep reading. The best is yet to be.
kinmel will always be magical and very precious to me, i went there when it was a christian conference centre for 4 years on the trot, when i was a kid. I'm concerned about the power tools etc you describe, what on earth is happening to it? I would love to see it saved but i wonder how the cost could be justified, maybe it could. j.southall66@gmail.com I'd be very interested to know what you find if you ever go again, and i note that you don't force entry xxx
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