[141630] Chirk Castle : Hawk House

Chirk Castle, Chirk, Wrexham.

The National Trust.

 

Hawk House.

Grade ll listed.

 

The first building on this site was a greenhouse designed by Joseph Turner 1776-78. It was considerably altered or rebuilt as a heated conservatory by Henry Weeks of Chelsea to the design of Edward Welby Pugin in 1854, and was radically rebuilt again by Lord Howard de Walden as a mews or hawk house in c1912, retaining Pugin's central bow-fronted plan. It was rethatched after a fire in 1977.

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The original castle was probably begun soon after 1295, for Roger Mortimer, for the newly created Marcher Lordship of Chirkland, on lands formerly being that of the Princedom of Llewelyn ap Gryffydd ap Madog.

 

Chirk Castle was never planned as a family home. Instead, it was one of several medieval Marcher fortresses along the Welsh-English border, built to keep the Welsh under English rule.

 

Successive leading architects and designers were involved in the creation of a major country house within the medieval framework, of which fine work of the late C18 and mid C19 especially stands out.

 

Done