We hope that members living in North East Wales can find time to visit Bailey Hill in Mold, since it’s been so beautifully improved, because we should all applaud and enjoy developments that enhance our local countryside, should we not?
But if you haven’t yet walked up the High Street and been into the Visitor Centre at the top, let us suggest you do, and then walk up to the bailey and then the motte at the top.
By way of grants, £1.8 million have been spent here, mostly on the Visitor Centre (with ramps to it for those of us whose legs may be older than our heads) telling the story of this 12th century aristocratic defensible home, and how it became derelict and neglected over the centuries.
Money has also been spent on very good footpaths right up to the top, on information panels, on forestry work to ensure that wildlife habitats are enhanced; and work to make sure that the views over the town below are unimpeded.
The Clwyd Branch last year gave it their annual Rural Wales Award, at which we said that one delight of the place is the way that the countryside reaches right into the centre of the town. A feature shared with Ruthin, where countryside reaches to Ruthin Castle which in turn reaches to the prettiest street in Ruthin and then bang! St.Peter’s Square. No petrol stations or industrial estates or supermarkets anywhere to be seen. But we digress.
A lady living near Ruthin has a poem of hers about Bailey Hill on the glass door of the Centre…..
Standing high upon the Motte
Remembering the people that time forgot
I saw a vision of how it might have been
And felt the ghostly breath of folks unseen
……..So do pay a visit if you live within reach, and be breathed on by 11 centuries of local history.
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