This was going to be part of my upcoming Anglesey-in-a-day post recounting the second day of our recent Snowdonia trip, but I think it deserves its own.

We found Baron Hill in the Wales Wild Guide, which describes it as “an extraordinary and completely overgrown ruined country mansion and gardens”. We were in Beaumaris anyway and as the place was nearby we thought we’d look for it, not knowing what to expect. We parked in a housing estate on the edge of the town and followed the book’s obscure directions across a road and over a shoulder-high wall into a wood thick with mature trees, shrubs and near-impenetrable rhododendron.

Garden

We wandered through the thick vegetation along narrow, criss-crossing paths. We were a little dubious until we came to a strange, rectangular structure made of waist-high stone, like the bottom half of a long room. I thought it might have been some kind of water tank or outdoor pool until we found several others nearby, all nestled in the trees. I’m still not entirely sure what they are and can’t find much about them online, but my guess is that they were the foundations of greenhouses or similar outhouses.

Next we came across a long brick wall with shallow, symmetrical alcoves and an arch leading into a large, extremely overgrown courtyard garden. Nearly every inch of brick had been consumed by ivy, the floor was smothered by ferns that looked straight out of Jurassic Park and skeletal greenhouses retreated shyly into leaf cover. It was enchanting. I looked at Google Maps on satellite view to guide us to the house, as its straight walls are easily visible from above as a fascinating, overgrown floorplan nestled in the trees.

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Stables & Servants’ Quarters

It was hard to believe that we’d actually find anything as the vegetation was so thick, but suddenly we were standing in front of a building with high stone walls and an open corridor formed by several large, rectangular, perfectly repeating arches. It was obviously a big building but it was difficult to tell where the architecture ended and nature began, as the two had seemingly fused into one inseparable whole. What little was left of the roof had fallen to the floor and mostly been absorbed by roots, leaves and tendrils.

We walked along the corridor and looked curiously into the large rooms that lined its left hand side. Through the ivy, ferns and now-resident trees we saw the remnants of colourful, patterned tiles, strange semi-circular recesses set into the walls and what looked like a rusty, once-elaborate metal divider of the type used for separating horse stalls. This object, along with the large arches, occasional fireplace and several water troughs stationed along the corridor, suggested that this building – despite its apparent bygone grandeur – was perhaps just the stables and servant’s quarters.

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Mansion

At the end of the corridor we turned right and our eyes were drawn instantly upwards, just above the canopy of trees. If this were a novel I’d say we found ourselves rooted to the spot with dropped jaws, rendered speechless by astonishment. This is not a novel so I’ll leave out the embellishment, but the sight of the enormous, ancient-Rome-or-Athens-esque building rising from the jungle in front of us, well into the process of being devoured by ivy, really was like nothing I’d ever seen before. We approached it almost apprehensively, instantly struck by the eerie juxtaposition of lavish grandeur and ruinous dereliction.

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The house was three high-ceilinged storeys high, with huge windows that were empty apart from foliage, birds nests and the occasional remnant of a wooden frame. Stone doorways granted access to the inside, which was full of wild plants and building detritus, some of it teetering precariously against walls. The main entrance was a bit further on and on the same side, framed by four enormously high, ivy-covered columns and a colossal doorframe. Inside, only the basic structural elements were left to imply the house’s size and magnificence, with the occasional stubborn detail left as a strange reminder that this place was once a home. Bare walls (save for some graffiti) towered around us under an uncovered grey sky that seemed disproportionately small, particularly in the claustrophobic corridors, where the multitudinous wires of an old servant calling system hung suspended in an inextricable tangle. Thick RSJ beams spanned the huge rooms like bones, impervious to the decay of the grand floors, carpets and furniture they once supported. A staircase fell away to nothing after a few steps then started again a bit higher up, and trees grew from first and second floor iron fireplaces which were strange to view from below. We were captivated.

We explored the house with fascination and a little trepidation, well aware of its obvious structural un-soundness. We  padded around the old rooms, crossed a plank of wood over a gap that hinted at a basement, and marvelled at the way nature had slowly, effortlessly and almost entirely reclaimed the land. The slightly sinister cawing of several nearby crows seemed to fill the walls, but otherwise it was completely still and pin-drop silent, as if time had stopped. The atmosphere is hard to describe; it felt like a place of contradictions – majestic but ruined, peaceful but eerie, benign but dangerous, neither dead nor alive, and constantly as if we were being quietly observed. A stark demonstration that where humanity ceases, nature thrives.

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We could have explored all day but were conscious of time, so after a cautious poke around we went through to the other side of the house, where more window and door frames towered high above us and the remains of a huge trellis spanned all three storeys, seemingly held up only by the ivy that grew thickly on it. The place is clearly well-known by local kids, evident from the graffiti, the odd bit of rubbish and the rope swing that I couldn’t resist before we ducked and weaved our way back through the thick vegetation to the wall we’d clambered over about an hour before. Carefully avoiding the low barbed wire fence, presumably installed as a half-hearted way of preventing access to the private land, we dropped down over the wall and back into the real world.

I now fancy myself as the next Indiana Jones.

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Endnote – the History

I can’t find much detail on the history of the place, but Wikipedia reliably tells me that the ruined mansion was built in 1618 by politician Sir Richard Bulkeley and has been in the family ever since, although it was reconstructed in its current style in 1776. During World War I, death duties (inheritance tax) depleted the Bulkeley fortune so much that they could no longer afford the upkeep and the house became used to station Royal Engineers. In 1939 the government requisitioned it to temporarily house Polish soldiers following the outbreak of World War II, but they found it too cold and started a fire in the hope they would be moved somewhere warmer. The fire destroyed much of the interior and the soldiers were removed – to tents in the grounds, ironically – and the abandoned mansion was left to nature.