Chirk Castle: Part One

To us Chirk castle was Camelot.

Chirk castle was lived in by a local family up until about ten years ago. Therefore, parts of the castle are completely renovated and basically a mansion, however, part of the castle still maintains the medieval feel from the days it was built.

To visit the castle legally, we had to enter at the base of the hill at the stables. When we were there it was nearly Halloween, and they were having some kind of event for the kids. Therefore, there were a bunch of kids dressed up and painting pumpkins.

The stables were revamped to hold a nice little gift shop and a used bookstore, where I found a book by Brian Jacques for my sister.

 From there it was a good 15-minute walk up and around to the Castle.

 This was a building behind the castle.

 Chirk Castle! Everything you could hope for in a medieval castle!

 Welsh countryside.

 As I said, they had a big event going on, and there were a bunch of people dressed up as knights, and there was a jester entertaining the crowd.

 Double gates in this castle!

 The courtyard inside the castle.

 This is the chapel. It is the only "new" renovated part of the castle wich I'll be showing today.

 As we wound our way up the castle, many of the medieval style rooms had props and things like a museum.

 Guess what..... MORE circular staircases. This is probably one of the pictures I managed to get during the entire semester, representing a tiny bit of the difficulty of climbing medieval circular staircases.

 This is the dungeon. You see. It was a single room at the bottom of a circular staircase -- rather difficult to escape from.

 More medieval rooms

 Barrel- vaulted ceiling. The last time we'd seen this was at Donegal Castle.

 Another reasonable shot representing the tightness of these staircases.

Visit again next week to see the modern day renovated parts of the Castle. They were stunningly rich and elaborate.