Holt Castle Conservation Work Starts
Work has started to conserve the remains of Holt Castle, near Wrexham.
The work by Bullen Conservation will ensure that the castle’s 13th century masonry will hopefully survive another 700 years. The castle was built in 1282 by John de Warenne following the defeat of Llewelyn Ap Gruffydd, the last Prince of Wales.
It was occupied until the Civil War, when it suffered a year long siege in 1644. Since then it has been used as a stone quarry firstly by Thomas Grosvenor to build an early version of Eaton Hall, and subsequently by local people eager to utilise the excellent building stone.
Such has been the extent of this destruction that a visitor is hard pressed to identify the site as a castle at all. However, Holt was once one of the strongest castles in the County and was chosen to house Richard II’s treasure at the end of the 14th Century and Sir William Stanley’s personal fortune at the end of the 15th century.
The work is being organised by Wrexham Heritage Service who are also about to start a second season of archaeological work on the site. The aim of the work is to discover new information about the castle, but also to reveal long buried features of the castle that can be displayed to the visiting public in the future.
This project has received funding through the Rural Development Plan for Wales 2007-2013 which is funded by the Welsh Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and from Cadw :Welsh Historic Monuments.
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