Baron Hill House: Exploring the ruin of a once magnificent estate

When we first started researching our trip to the UK back in the fall of 2016 we kept coming up with references to the "Baron Hill House" while looking up things to do on the Isle of Anglesey in Northern Wales. Baron Hill House was once owned by the Bulkeley family and was established in 1618. The Bulkeley's were the dominant landowners in West Gwynedd on Anglesey and the family had the original 1618 mansion rebuilt in 1776 following the popular Neo-Palladian style of the period which is made obvious from the curved facade of the building to the terraces, follies and balconies.

Along with the grand mansion there was a guest lodge, a gate house, an ice house, stables, fountains and beautiful gardens on the sprawling estate. During the early 1900's most of the family fortune was lost and after a fire damaged part of the house they could no longer afford to keep it running and it fell into disrepair and was finally abandoned. Baron Hill house was truly one of the grandest and most lavish estates to ever be constructed in Wales, and what is so remarkable about the ruins of this once glorious home and grounds is that the structures were never demolished and that the property and woods were never developed but remain largely undisturbed over all these many years.

The tract we followed. Just to set the mood, these are REALLY creepy woods. Right out of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

After a little sleuthing it became apparent that Baron Hill House just happened to lie within walking distance of The Smithy, so we decided that we couldn't leave Wales without checking it out. Working with satellite images of the area we were able to pinpoint what we thought might be a trail leading onto the not-so-public grounds. We packed a backpack with some snacks and on a cold gray morning set out in search of the derelict mansion.

A two hundred year old mile marker along the old roadbed that led into Baron Hill House

After a half a mile or so walk down the old coach road we entered pretty thick wood, overgrown with a snarl of now wild rhododendron bushes that marked the boundary of the estate. The woods were quite spooky, and seemed ancient and watchful. It really was a little unnerving.

We were quite happy that it hadn't rained in two days because the little path we were following was
getting muddier by the minute. After ducking under branches, and stepping over logs we rounded a corner and caught our first glimpse of the mansion.

The size of the ruins is just unbelievable. Nothing really prepares you for just how BIG this mansion  was. We have both lived and worked on large estates in the past and they pale in comparison. This was wealth on a whole different scale.

We started working our way around the north side of the building, towards the front of the manor.
The path was slick with mud as we followed an old walkway with stepping stones tilted at jaunty angles by the roots of runaway trees.

Once we made it to the other side the underbrush opened up a little and we were able to get our first view into the interior of the house. The overgrown brambles and bushes that surround the mansion must be almost impenetrable in the summer so we felt pretty lucky to be exploring the area in the early spring.

Anyone who has ever explored abandoned homes knows the feeling you get when you stand inside a structure that someone used to call home.

Part of the Grand Staircase

It's kind of a mixture of reverence and the feeling that you are definitely an interloper. You tend to talk in hushed tones as if you are in a library or church and it's really hard to shake that feeling that you are being watched.

To say that the inside of Baron Hill House is unsafe is a pretty dramatic understatement. 

It looks like an accident just waiting to happen so we tried to use as much common sense as possible in determining what parts of the mansion were safe and which parts to stay away from.

 Everywhere you looked there was something to see. 

 A huge tree erupting from what was once a stately planter. A intricate tiled terrace now shattered and in disarray. Vines and creepers enveloping a ornate waterspout. Unidentified lumps hidden under foliage dotted the surrounding grounds.

 The building just goes on and on and on. It seems endless. 

At some points the walls of the structure continued so far without a break that the only way to get from one side of the building to the other was to find one of the hundreds of doors that was unblocked by rubble or plant life and creep through the frighteningly unstable interior to an exit door on the other side.

 Once through to the other side you could clearly see the carriage entrance and the grand pillars.

 We explored the the building in this way, moving back and forth between the different sides.

By this time the sucking mud was starting to pull at our shoes and dirt and mossy green residue blanketed our clothes. We looked like a couple of explorers just emerging from a lost Inca city.

Once again we can't emphasize just how big of an area this estate covers. We literally explored the area for over four hours.

There were times when we became utterly confused and turned around, finding our path blocked by a fallen wall or having to veer off because of a twelve foot wall that doubled back on itself like a maze.

 You think you must be past the main structure of the manor when you turn a corner and there's another entirely new wing!

We have to admit, we were having great time exploring these ruins. There's something fascinating about abandoned sites and this was a colossal abandoned site. We kept walking and poking around and it just continued on and on.

This is us taking a uncharacteristic selfie we were SO happy!

We only brought 2 roundees* (energy balls) and a couple of fig newtons with us and our blood sugar levels were dangerously low so we had a lovely picnic, sitting on a couple of ancient slate pavers next to a crumbling mansion. Satiated after our 200 calorie break we continued on our impromptu tour.

By this point our shoes were caked with mud, we had lichen and moss caught in our hair but we couldn't have been happier! We started working our way down towards what must have been the stables and when we were poking around the horse stalls we were befriended by a really bold little bird.

He or she (We think it was a "he" because of the vivid coloring) was delightfully tame and hopped right up next to us and Jerani fed him/her a little bit of the last fig bar we had in reserve. He happily gobbled it down and we watched our new found friend for another five minutes or so before continuing on.

 

We found ourselves following a series of convoluted walls which led us down through what must have been the gardens.

What are these structures? There were at least 20 or so between the main road and the house.

By now we were both beginning to drag and we decided that we didn't want to head back home the way we had come so we headed towards Beaumaris, to what our initial research on Baron Hill Manor had described as an easier route off the property.

As we walked through woods that you just KNEW were haunted after nightfall, towards the sound of traffic far off in the distance, we kept coming across these low bunker like structures  that we decided must have been green houses. I mean they were scattered everywhere.

Off through the woods in every direction you could see other small buildings and fallen walls covered in vines, and we had to be a quarter mile from the main part of the manor. This estate must have been enormous, but by this time we were too worn out to follow up on any of the new discoveries. We knew that even when we followed the path back to Beaumaris we'd still have a good 3/4 mile hike home so we trudged on.

The size of this tree was incredible. You could see where it had lived through a fire. The bark was weirdly spongy and hollow sounding.

A silly goose of a pheasant. They are not very smart. We followed this one for awhile til he finally ran off into the woods.

We finally emerged right next to a road that we recognized from our bus rides to and from town. The thing we didn't notice when riding the bus was the eight foot stone wall that we were now standing at the edge of looking at the traffic below as it roared by. Hmmm... No way down here. We (I/David) decided that if we followed the trail towards town that at some point we could get past the wall. Fast forward about a half mile and twenty minutes into the future and we were both standing and looking up at a eight foot wall. The path led exactly to this point, never leading out of the haunted woods, but always hemmed in by an ancient eight foot wall on one side and a barbed wire sheep fence on the other. And yes if we HAD to get over it we could. Like if being chased by wolves or vampires, but we would've probably broken something and scritched up our clothes.

Hunger, mud, frustration and weariness was starting to turn us against one another, and it didn't help that it was looking like we were going to have to retrace our steps through a muddy maze of debris, and to top things off it seemed to be getting prematurely dark in the haunted woods we didn't seem to find a way out of. To make matters worse we ran across a fallen tree in the woods, but not just ANY tree, the creepiest tree that ever grew. (We later found out on the internet that this tree was called the "tree of souls", great huh?)

We still had miles to walk through ankle deep mud so as cheery as the tortured tree was we decided to continue on.

We wound our way back through the rubble, getting a little lost and having a somewhat harder time than we had imagined retracing our steps.

We found different things on the way back through. Like this old bathroom hidden around a lost corner.

We finally turned a corner and low and behold we had made it back to the Manor. Yippee!
Dog tired we trudged on through the stickers and mud and finally emerged from the woods.

We were completely toast, and on top of that tonight was our last evening in Wales and we had to pack (YUCK!!!) It had also started to rain, and what was first a fine mist had turned into a deluge. So muddy, soaked and exhausted we stumbled back towards the Smithy and to a joyous evening of suitcase stuffing.Here's a pick in a mirror on the golf course.

When we got home we never sat down until we had cleaned out boots with hot soap and water, sponged off our coats which had green moss dust all over. That stuff doesn't come off very well. Then David sat down and I fried up the bacon and eggs we had left and couldn't even cook them properly. I basically stirred the bacon around in a pot then dumped the eggs in and stirred it around until they set and then poured it over a croissant. Served it to David and he didn't seem to notice my lack of technique!! After eating we sat for hours before we could move again! We managed to clean the house up and pack but it was a great effort. So worth it!