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00:01Britain's castles.
00:03Fortresses fit for royalty.
00:06That is foreboding.
00:08And massive.
00:11They've withstood sieges and wars.
00:13Guys with pikes and muskets facing off and shooting each other.
00:17And mad monarchs.
00:19He locked her in the castle, starving to death.
00:23But today, many are crumbling.
00:26You can see it bulging out.
00:28And I'll cry.
00:30And their future is at risk.
00:32A palace fit for a king becomes something that people dreaded going into.
00:38Now, teams of engineers and historians are racing to save them.
00:44It's so cool, isn't it?
00:46You have a certain structural beauty to it.
00:48Yes.
00:49Revealing the secrets of their regal history.
00:52Queen Victoria came to visit when she was princess.
00:55Connected.
00:55And their unique design.
00:57Holy King Harry hid in this very chamber.
01:00As they battle to bring these giants back from the brink.
01:04Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:09I'm Rick Edwards.
01:11And this is Great British Castle Rescue.
01:38That is for loading.
01:44And massive.
01:49Wow.
01:52Grich Castle, North Wales.
01:57A two centuries-old Gothic masterpiece.
02:02Bequeathed to the royal family,
02:06site of several titanic medieval battles,
02:09but now a virtual ruin.
02:18And he is creepy.
02:23Some of it looks like it's almost been consumed by the forest.
02:28It still is spectacular,
02:30but now it's obviously fallen into real disrepair.
02:37To find out what's happened to Grich,
02:39I'm meeting the castle's current custodian, Mark Baker.
02:44Hey, Mark.
02:45Hello.
02:46Welcome to Grich.
02:48Thanks for having me.
02:51So, it is absolutely vast, Mark.
02:55Where was it mainly built?
02:56What you mostly see is about 200 years old.
03:00But the Lloyd family had the castle for nearly a thousand years.
03:06The current Gothic-style iteration of the castle
03:09was built by local landowner Lloyd Hesketh Bamford Hesketh
03:13of the ancestral Lloyds of Grich.
03:16But from the mid-1920s onwards,
03:19the castle fell out of the family's hands and into dereliction.
03:24An American bought it in right about 1989,
03:29and he lived in California,
03:32and he was termed an absentee owner.
03:35And the castle...
03:37It was like an apocalypse.
03:40So beautiful and, you know, really cherished by local people.
03:46And I saw it disappearing into the hillside.
03:51That really pushed me to want to do something.
03:54Try and save the place.
03:57But the ambition was never to own it.
03:59It was always to facilitate.
04:01You're the king of the castle, and it's fine, you can say.
04:04I've been spearheading it for a long time,
04:07but, you know, it's a team effort.
04:11Shall we kind of poke around the side?
04:13Of course.
04:16Mark's plan is to restore Grich to its former glory
04:20and open it to the public.
04:22So we'll need to put some hard hats on.
04:25OK.
04:29But I'm about to find out how big a task he has in front of him.
04:33Just be careful, because you go from the light into the dark.
04:36I'm sticking really close to you.
04:38OK.
04:46So, this is the Great Hall.
04:51So is this the kind of central atrium of the castle, effectively?
04:56We think this was the original medieval Great Hall.
05:01This is so much work, Mark.
05:04This is absolutely huge.
05:07And I have no idea where you would even begin to start.
05:15When was the last time someone actually lived here?
05:18So, where it says no entry up there?
05:21No.
05:21That's where the caretaker lived until about 1994.
05:26OK.
05:27And would the castle have been in this kind of state then?
05:30No.
05:31You could walk around every room.
05:32Oh, could you really?
05:33It had electric, water.
05:35So it's really kind of fallen apart in the last, yeah, sort of 30 years.
05:41Yeah.
05:41Here I've got some photographs out of the archives which show some of the spaces.
05:48I mean, it is...
05:50It's stunning, isn't it?
05:52Really elaborate, very highly decorated spaces that were built to impress.
05:58It's actually, it's really hard, it's kind of hard to believe that this is here.
06:04Yeah.
06:05So, that room is the one...
06:08Is that that?
06:09Yeah.
06:10So, that window there is the one in the corner with the green room.
06:15But in the 1990s, as Grich lay empty with an absentee American owner, it was vulnerable.
06:23New Age squatters broke in and set up a commune.
06:27It was asset strips, basically.
06:29Right.
06:29So, the squatters used any burnable materials when they were squatting on site.
06:35Everything was taken.
06:37There was no bit of furniture left in the building.
06:41The roof was removed in the mid-90s.
06:43And then, you know, within 18 months, everything just started to drop.
06:48So, where we stood now, there's about 20 feet of rubble.
06:54You know, quite devastating because I saw it as a kid.
07:00And these photos are amazing reference points.
07:03Yeah.
07:03In terms of, like, what are we doing in here?
07:05There's enough evidence, really, to kind of show what it was like.
07:10Mm.
07:10And, yeah.
07:12And, you know, it'll enable us to recreate what's been lost.
07:16Yeah.
07:16It's exciting.
07:18And, to be fair, daunting.
07:20Yeah.
07:20Yeah, that's my task.
07:32To show me why Grich is so worth fighting for, Mark takes me out to explore the rugged Welsh landscape
07:39around the castle that has etched this site into our nation's past.
07:45It's really cool the way it just sort of, it looks like it's kind of growing out of the quarry
07:50face.
07:51Yeah.
07:51Cliffs are very important in terms of the history of this area.
07:58This castle sits high on a cliff line that has commanded over some of the greatest moments in Welsh and
08:05British history.
08:07So, this is Lady Emily's Tower.
08:10So, we're about 500 feet up here.
08:13This is fantastic.
08:14Do you see Wales?
08:16Yeah.
08:16You can see England, Scotland.
08:18And, what was so important about this spot, it's the closest point between the cliff and the sea.
08:27So, it's a natural...
08:28It's a pinch point.
08:29Yeah.
08:30Grich was the perfect spot to launch an ambush on rival armies, as they funnelled between the water and the
08:36cliffs below.
08:37And, in 1063, just three years before the most famous medieval battle in history, that is exactly what happened.
08:45This is a blood-soaked plain.
08:50And, it's called...
08:52The Field of Corpses.
09:07In spring 1063, three years before he famously battles the Normans at Hastings,
09:13Harold Godwinson led an English Anglo-Saxon army into the then independent Kingdom of Wales.
09:23Harold 1066, arrow through the eye.
09:26Don't know that guy, yeah.
09:27He was fighting the Welsh on the plain below.
09:32In the land below Grich, Harold's forces faced down the warriors of the Welsh king, Griffith ap Llewellyn.
09:41Harold came up here and chased across the plain.
09:49I'm in this spot here.
09:52This is where the battle took place.
09:57The Saxons and the Welsh.
10:00And that's literally down here.
10:01Literally down here.
10:04Harold smashes King Griffith's army.
10:06Cowed by defeat, the Welsh turn on their own king.
10:10And, in August 1063, they bring Harold Griffith's head.
10:16And it's from this point that the Welsh nation fell apart, which then opened it up to the English.
10:25So, in terms of Welsh history, incredibly important.
10:30In the following centuries, Grich's coastal pass became an epic battle site.
10:36Shakespeare immortalised what happened here.
10:411399, Richard II travelling east.
10:46And he was caught here, going through this narrow pass.
10:54By 1399, King Richard II's reign had been marred by several major revolts.
11:00Two decades earlier, he'd quelled a peasants' revolt led by Wat Tyler.
11:05But now his own noblemen had tired of him too.
11:09His cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, seized his chance and chased Richard and his forces into Wales.
11:16Richard was not expecting to meet Henry's men who were waiting for him at the pass.
11:25They came charging down the hillside.
11:28So, down below, on the valley floor, it would have been an apocalyptic scene.
11:34Burying the dead on the spot.
11:41Richard was sent off into exile.
11:47Then was killed.
11:49And Henry Bolingbroke became Henry IV.
11:54So, all of that has happened on this spot.
11:59Lamentous moments in British history and Welsh history.
12:02Everything starts here.
12:03Yeah.
12:05And I think people forget, you know, what's gone on here.
12:09So, it's not just a 19th century castle.
12:11It's not just a lovely castle.
12:15It's hard not to be persuaded by this epic history and Mark's obvious passion that Grich Castle has to survive.
12:26Below the cliffs, Mark brings me to a gatehouse on the far edge of the property.
12:31To uncover the dramatic ancestral family history, which, 800 years later, saw it slide towards rack and ruin.
12:42This is one of the gate lodges.
12:44Oh, well, this is lovely.
12:46Yeah, it's not bad.
12:47But it's quite useful to start here to talk about the family's history.
12:52And it all came down to an heiress.
12:55She was born around about 1859.
12:57Her name was Winifred, and she married a Scots nobleman.
13:02So, she became the Countess of Dundonald.
13:05Grich was her family home.
13:08And she had grand plans for the place.
13:14She was good friends with Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra.
13:17She was part of that royal court.
13:19Mm.
13:20She had Queen Victoria come to visit.
13:22Connected.
13:23So, the Countess of Dundonald, she had a vision.
13:26And that vision was a permanent royal home in Wales.
13:31You had Balmoral, Scotland.
13:35You've got all the palaces in England.
13:37And Wales didn't have anything.
13:39And she saw an opportunity to fill a gap.
13:43She left everything to the royal family in 1924.
13:48The thing that is nagging at me, obviously, is something's gone wrong.
13:52She had a heart attack.
13:55So, very, very sudden.
13:57Because she died so suddenly, her plans hadn't been, like, crystallised properly.
14:03Oh.
14:03And her husband was like, no, you've disinherited me.
14:06And he stopped, basically, the royal family from taking over.
14:11He said to his children that no member of my family will ever live here again.
14:16And that's what happened.
14:19Without the late Countess, and cut off from the hereditary family,
14:23the stage was set for Grich's slow decline.
14:27Between 1946 and 1989, there was about 20 different owners.
14:32Wow.
14:32So, after her death, no-one in the family lived here again?
14:36No.
14:36Her family just lost contact with the castle.
14:39God, that's sad, isn't it?
14:42So, the Countess, she's apparently seen walking across East Lawn and people have seen her kind of disappearing between the
14:49battlements.
14:51I suppose if she is still here, you want to make sure you do a good job.
14:55Yeah.
14:59Back at the central keep, I head down into the ruin to meet the person with the unenviable task of
15:05coming up with a plan to reconstruct this castle, architect Rob Chambers.
15:11So, you are putting this all back together.
15:14Hopefully. That is the intention, yes.
15:16I mean, there is basically nothing left.
15:19There's no internal structure at all.
15:23What we've got left, essentially, is the bones of the structural fabric of the building.
15:28One of the key aspirations of the castle, quite unusually, is to actually put back some of the interiors to
15:34how they work,
15:35faithful to the original castle in terms of its materials.
15:38So, it's very challenging.
15:40In some places, we can obviously see exactly where the floor lines were, where the skirting boards were, where the
15:45ceilings were.
15:46But understanding all of those things accurately is essential for us to be able to design how it's put back.
15:53And that's where, you know, some modern technologies around the 3D modelling and things come in.
16:01The scanner sends out hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of individual points.
16:07So cool, isn't it?
16:11This is an incredibly accurate tool.
16:13We can then identify, right down to individual stones, how that element is going to be repaired.
16:19Because we can zoom into areas a higher level, we can get anywhere.
16:24All of the profiles of the doors, all of the mouldings that survive.
16:29So here, we're looking at an aerial view of the space looking down.
16:34All right.
16:34And this gives you a real sense of the layout of the castle.
16:39Also really emphasises how much you've got to.
16:42It does, yes.
16:44What stage are you at with your reconstruction plan?
16:48We have planning permissions to put roofs back on the main space.
16:52So we'd put floors in and then that allows you to scaffold and then reinstate the roof at the top.
16:58So it gets the castle watertight.
17:01It's that first big step.
17:03The work ahead at Grich could ultimately take a decade and cost well over £10 million.
17:09But Mark and his team, with previous help from the National Lottery, have already started to fundraise to reach that
17:15goal.
17:18And inspiration for what's possible could lie just 150 miles north in Cumbria.
17:27Where a beautiful royal refuge stands as a shining example of what can be achieved, even when you're on the
17:35brink of ruin.
17:38Even on a slightly gloomy day like today, it's a fabulous view.
17:42In 1988, Peter Frost married into the Pennington family and became joint custodian of Moncaster Castle.
17:51It's been continually inhabited by our family since around 1208, when the land was granted to us by King John,
17:59to a gentleman called Alan de Pennington.
18:02Despite its long history, by the time Peter married Iona Pennington in the late 1980s, Moncaster was fast becoming a
18:10ruin.
18:12When I kind of took over, we couldn't afford to put the heating on sleeping bags and rugs.
18:17Very chilly, but we were hardy.
18:20The roof was fairly dire and there were leaks everywhere.
18:25We had over a hundred buckets and a whole lot of margarine tubs.
18:30And so going round emptying them was quite a full-time job, really, if it had rained.
18:36The furnishings and paintings were getting damp and there was dry rot.
18:42Pretty soon, the problems really came home to roost and you realised what a mountain we had to climb in
18:50trying to save the building.
18:53In 1996, we had a survey done and they said, if you do nothing, then it'll be unlivable in five
19:02years or a ruin in ten.
19:08It was real decision time.
19:11What do we do?
19:13You know, do we sell up or do we carry on what our ancestors had done, really, and get on
19:19and find a way through it?
19:24The history of the Penningtons and Moncaster Castle is entwined in extraordinary ways.
19:31The family and castle have been the stage for royal intrigue since the 15th century.
19:38Come into this interesting little room here, or relatively little compared to other rooms in the castle.
19:44So we're now standing in the King's Room.
19:47We know at least one King has slept in here because we know Edward VIII visited here in the 1930s.
19:52But far more important to the Pennington family is the story of King Henry VI, who visited here in 1464.
19:59Now, King Henry VI was not a very effective king, unlike his father, Henry V, who was a great marshal
20:06king who won the Battle of Agincourt.
20:07Henry VI was not so good in the battlefield.
20:12In the 15th century, Lancastrian King Henry VI was suffering with severe mental illness and even schizophrenia.
20:21And struggling to fight the Wars of the Roses against his fierce battle-hardened rival, Edward, Duke of York.
20:30In 1464, Henry lost the crucial Battle of Hexham in Northumberland and fled to Moncaster Castle.
20:40The Penningtons were staunch Lancastrians. We took him in and gave him breakfast, looked after him.
20:46But on the run from marauding Yorkists, King Henry VI also needed a place to hide.
20:53Something quite surprising here. I have to sort of prise it open.
20:57And there.
21:00Every good castle needs a secret passage.
21:08It leads to a little chamber up above, hidden in the walls.
21:13The chamber's large enough for a grown man to hide fairly comfortably in there for days on end if necessary.
21:24Holy King Harry hid in this very chamber, accessed by this windy spiral staircase.
21:33Henry VI managed to conceal himself at Moncaster for several weeks without being caught.
21:39But eventually he broke cover and tried to ride south to reclaim his throne.
21:45He was soon captured and then imprisoned and murdered in the Tower of London.
21:54But King Henry VI's legacy is still felt at Moncaster today.
21:59He left his little enamel glass drinking bowl, made Murano glass from Venice in Italy,
22:05and left it behind saying, as long as this bowl remains, you'll keep the castle.
22:11This painting here is showing Henry VI holding the holy bowl and blessing it.
22:18Incredibly, the Penningtons still have the bowl Henry VI gave them.
22:23It's now known to the family as the luck of Moncaster.
22:28We're quite careful of it.
22:31So we don't get it out very often, unless we really have to.
22:35So it's well over 500 years old.
22:37It's Venetian glass.
22:40As long as the bowl remains unriven, never from Moncaster will the Penningtons be driven.
22:45I guess it's the more poetic version.
22:48But the words of a late king alone were not enough.
22:52The Penningtons needed a plan to save their castle.
23:07At Moncaster in Cumbria, inspired by the words of late King Henry VI,
23:12Peter and Iona Pennington and their son Ewan have made it their mission to fundraise
23:17and save their 800-year-old castle from ruin.
23:21We managed to get a grant from English Heritage and we then added to it by selling family silver, literally.
23:32So we redesigned the roof so the water went to the parapets and that was the first thing we started
23:38doing.
23:40Without a new roof, it probably would be a ruin now.
23:44Which would, er, yeah, wouldn't be good.
23:51With its newly restored roof and its beautifully renovated and decorated rooms,
23:56Moncaster is now open to the public once more.
23:59It's testament to the family's commitment to the history and heritage of their ancestral home.
24:06Moncaster's far bigger than the Pennington family,
24:09but at the moment we're managing to keep that tradition of it being a family home
24:14and cherished and loved by the Pennington family.
24:18I hope we're not doing too bad a job of it.
24:28Back at Grich Castle, renovation work is finally underway as well.
24:33What Steve is working on is the porch.
24:38So this was the family's private entrance into the castle.
24:42Steve Partington is a specialist stonemason.
24:45Hello, Steve. What are you doing up there?
24:47Come up and have a look if you like.
24:49Er, yeah, yeah, I will.
24:50Yeah, you've always got to come up a tower on the inside.
24:53Yeah, I mean, obviously I knew that, Steve.
24:56Steve is working with stones carved from the mighty cliffs around the castle.
25:01Basically, if you look at the quarry faces, you can see where it's been chiselled out.
25:05That's literally going from here.
25:06A lot of it's actually from here on site.
25:09Problem is with this stone, it's very, very hard, dense stone.
25:12And if you get any movement in it, it's just all this water ingress.
25:15See where it's running down the walls?
25:17Yeah.
25:17So we'll be taking all this out, all this vegetation, repointing it.
25:22It will cure that leak.
25:24Once this one's done, we're going to basically move up onto the main roof.
25:29So is this like a full-time job here?
25:31Yeah, basically.
25:33I'm retired, believe it or not, but I'm still doing it.
25:37It's such a fantastic project to work on.
25:39We really love working up here and making it last another good few hundred years, hopefully.
25:48And inside the keep, Mark and his team are about to start work on one of the castle's most impressive
25:54features.
25:57Oh, wow. That's incredible.
26:00That is some staircase, even now.
26:04So, Kevin, it's you who's leading the actual work here. It's a big job.
26:10With preparations at Grich ramping up, Kevin Illott has joined as project manager.
26:16I come from mainstream construction, so large-scale development in the Middle East.
26:20Oh, wow.
26:21So you're sort of used to doing skyscrapers and stuff like that?
26:24But this is a very different sort of challenge, then.
26:26Yes, when this project came up, I thought this could be quite a labour of love.
26:31A project like this you can more focus on doing it right.
26:34One of Kevin's first tasks will be to help Mark restore this magnificent stairway,
26:39known back in its Victorian pomp as the Marble Staircase.
26:44This is inspired by one of the main staircases at Buckingham Palace, where they use that perspective trick.
26:53It's to draw your eye.
26:56It was called one of the Seven Wonders of Wales.
27:02And when you look at the historic imagery, you understand why.
27:07So this photograph was taken around 1950 under the Verdi Antico marble.
27:12It goes up the walls as well.
27:14And it's that wow factor.
27:16Yeah.
27:16So you're a visitor here, you'd be brought up, and then got this.
27:25Where we stood now, we discovered something very exciting.
27:29One of the rare survivors.
27:32I'll give you a hint from how grand this space used to be.
27:39Ooh!
27:40Ooh!
27:41That is nice.
27:43And even under all the mud and grime it looks.
27:47When it's got all wet off, it's beautiful.
27:50Architect Rob's 3D scans give us a sense of how exquisite this marble floor really is.
27:57I wonder why the Lotus didn't have this as well.
28:01Floors above some of the first to collapse in the building.
28:05Oh, so just buried under rubble?
28:06It was preserved by the dereliction.
28:10The same craftspeople that were working at the main royal palace in the UK
28:15were working here at the same time.
28:17It's stunning, isn't it?
28:19If it was me, this would be my sort of focus, like, get this back.
28:23Yeah.
28:23And you're in business, aren't you?
28:25It's fantastic.
28:30Nearly 300 miles east of Grich lies a castle with an equally remarkable restoration story.
28:39Norwich Castle was founded by William the Conqueror in 1068
28:45and developed into a stone fortress by his son, William Rufus.
28:50The third stone keep built by the Normans in England.
28:53This is really projecting power, authority and art for art's sake.
29:01The exterior faces of the keep have an extremely ornate series of arcades.
29:07The stone that is being used, and it's actually imported all the way from Caen in Normandy.
29:14You're bringing France with you and building a magnificent structure like this.
29:19The Normans were now in charge.
29:21Despite the castle's incredible design and heritage,
29:25by the 14th century, King Edward III considered Norwich unfit for a royal residence.
29:30And in 1345, he converted it into a dark, desperate jail.
29:35A palace literally fit for a king becomes something that people would have dreaded going into.
29:45Various iterations of prison buildings destroyed what was left of any of the inner structure of the rooms.
29:54In 1880, Norwich Castle was finally closed as a prison.
29:58But Victorian architects considered it unsalvageable as a castle
30:03and instead converted it into a taxidermy museum.
30:07And that was the way that the museum was configured,
30:12all the way up to a few years ago when we began this new project.
30:18In 2020, a national lottery-funded project set about finally returning Norwich Castle's interior to its former glory.
30:28And what we're showing here is recreating in the middle of it, most importantly,
30:33the original floor-to-ceiling height that would have been there at the Norman period.
30:39Over five years, using extensive research into centuries-old historic documents,
30:46the team at Norwich were able to faithfully reconstruct its Norman design.
30:51So this is the Great Hall.
30:54We know visitors were coming here wanting to see a castle.
30:58And our reconstruction is trying to show what this amazing space would have looked like
31:04at the start of the 12th century.
31:06We reused existing damage to reinsert new steels into the floor
31:12and having used historic references.
31:15We've actually recreated how they would have used all of the wood
31:18and we needed to work with craftsmen to ensure that they look the way that they do.
31:30This was the entrance to the king's chamber, which was the sort of inner sanctum of the building,
31:40where the king would receive only the most favoured guests.
31:44And the status of this room is reflected in the fact that you've got walls which have been painted.
31:54We know that these palaces were richly adorned with things like these banners and textiles, but richly painted.
32:03It is something that might challenge people's preconceptions when they see a bare stone wall like that.
32:10They can easily see that that is old, it's medieval.
32:14But this was new once.
32:19People can finally really get what a royal palace like this would have looked like.
32:30Back at Grich Castle in Wales, Mark Baker takes me out into the castle's garden terraces, built in the 1830s.
32:38So, this is the east lawn.
32:41This was a very private space, so this was only used by the family.
32:46Mark has started to reconstruct these gardens from a state of ruin.
32:50But unlike the central keep, the source of the destruction out here is totally unexpected.
32:58And we're coming up to the Great Conservatory.
33:02So, this survived until around about 1940.
33:10And during World War II, when the German planes were coming back from Liverpool,
33:17they were indiscriminately dropping bombs to lighten the load to get back to Germany.
33:25Oh, so they've done the bombing that they want to do, and then they're just trying to get rid of
33:27some?
33:28Conserve on fuel.
33:34In 1944, as the Nazi war machine faltered, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to concentrate its efforts on Britain's industrial centres.
33:48Liverpool and its docks, just 40 miles north of Grich, were a prime target.
33:53And the castle was directly under the bomber's route back home to Germany.
34:00They would just indiscriminately drop bombs.
34:05Because the castle's such a big structure, and it's white limestone, so on a moonlit night, it's quite visible.
34:12So you can imagine being here.
34:16Everything's pitch black.
34:18And then suddenly...
34:22Bang!
34:28Terrifying.
34:29It landed just in front of the conservatory, so it blew out the glass from that window,
34:34and it shattered the glass of the conservatory.
34:38So that's when nothing survives now.
34:40So it was literally just blown up.
34:43But it's something that we'd love to restore.
34:45That link to Liverpool, link to World War II.
34:48I think it's important that we put it back.
34:52It feels like this place is kind of dripping with history through the ages.
34:57But incredibly, I'm about to find out this isn't even the most dramatic story at this castle during World War
35:04II.
35:17The castle's history stretches from epic battles in the 11th century, right through to pivotal moments in World War II.
35:29The dining room has a really remarkable history.
35:33This is the room that, during World War II, we had 200 Jewish refugee children, and it saved their lives.
35:41Oh, wow. That's incredible.
35:45In 1938, the Nazi government began to enact their vendetta against their Jewish population.
35:52Families were to be rounded up and sent to concentration camps to be killed.
35:56Britain responded by creating a scheme called the Kindertransport, offering a small number of Jewish children asylum in the UK.
36:05But before they could come, they needed a sponsor to offer accommodation.
36:09The Dundonald family, the Countess's son, gave the castle over to house the children.
36:16Amazing thing to do.
36:20In total, 10,000 children came to the UK.
36:26Although they were safe, many would never see their parents again.
36:32They came to this dark, cold castle in North Wales, and this was the room that they had their lessons
36:40in, that they would eat.
36:43And we've got some really good archive images of them.
36:53And they were here in isolation. They didn't know what was happening. It was only after the war they found
36:58out.
37:00But we're getting the descendants coming now.
37:03So that's been really important, to continue that link.
37:11After discovering a cache of letters two years ago about his grandmother's time here, Benjamin Preece and his mother Sandra
37:19have come to visit Grich Castle from Melbourne, Australia.
37:23My grandmother, Sonia Eberman, was a survivor from the Kindertransport.
37:29Letters written during 1939 and 1940 mentioned all of these places that I'd never heard of before, and Grich Castle
37:38was one of them.
37:39So it just started off a bit of a journey to learn more and understand more.
37:44Trying to understand how it would have been for a 16 year old girl to land in a foreign country
37:53on her own, having left her mother and older sister behind.
37:59Being one of the first groups of kids to land here.
38:04Remarkably, aged 102, their grandmother, Sonia Eberman, is still alive.
38:10So, Bubba, we're at Grich Castle now.
38:14Amazing.
38:15We're in the grounds.
38:17It's amazing.
38:19But you went to the place that I went to.
38:22And what were you doing mostly there?
38:26Working in the fields.
38:28Oh.
38:28Working in the farm.
38:30And of course, at the beginning, cleaning the steps.
38:34Yes.
38:36At the beginning.
38:37Was that hard work?
38:39We had to clean the place up before we could live in there.
38:43Yeah.
38:46So, Bubba, we just wanted to call you and say we can see all of this and it's amazing and
38:52we love you.
38:53And we're walking in your footsteps.
38:57I wanted to go and feel this place for myself.
39:00I wanted to walk on the same stairs that my grandmother did.
39:04I just wanted to experience and feel the history here.
39:08The narrative of all my grandparents who were Holocaust survivors.
39:13Grich Castle, it is part of her survival story.
39:16And therefore mine.
39:18And therefore his.
39:19I can think of no greater reason to save this castle.
39:26And now Mark Baker has made a crucial connection that could help him do just that.
39:32After the death of the Countess Dundonald in 1924,
39:36Grich Castle and its lands fell out of the hands of the Lloyds of Grich
39:40after a thousand years of family ownership.
39:43The ancestral family completely lost contact with the castle.
39:48But now, after a hundred years separation, Mark has finally tracked them down.
39:54Obviously I was a bit in shock.
39:56I was thinking, gosh, who's this guy on Instagram?
39:59That was my first initial reaction.
40:02Lady Marina is the great, great niece of Winifred Cochran, the Countess Dundonald.
40:09I'm kind of shocked my dad didn't explain all of this to me.
40:13The men didn't just, you know, explain what would happen with all the amazing women in my family.
40:20And the legacy of Winifred Cochran.
40:23So Mark was actually connecting the females again with my aunt Tania
40:28and I sort of being involved with the project.
40:33I remember walking out onto the grounds and looking back up at the castle
40:39and seeing this apparition in the window.
40:43So I wonder if that was Winifred welcoming me.
40:50And I think it was. I think it was.
40:55When Mark took over, every single piece of the castle's artwork
40:59had been plundered or removed.
41:02But, in a twist of fate, Lady Marina is perfectly qualified
41:06to help him finally rebuild its collection.
41:09I'm an art historian.
41:12Mark asked if I could put a strategy together.
41:16At a castle lodge, Mark, Marina and Tania have been coming together
41:20to try and trace Grich's lost artwork.
41:23I've been working on the partnership, so tracking down the sort of collection
41:27to reinstate it at some point.
41:29We literally pore over these pictures with magnifying glasses
41:34to try and work out what was here.
41:36I think we discovered on these console tables
41:39that there was actually the auction mark.
41:42I viewed some bits and pieces at Windsor,
41:45which could possibly be one of the missing portraits.
41:49So we're looking into that.
41:51We're slowly identifying bits of the collection
41:54in a steady and stable process.
41:57Try and track down where it all went.
41:59And hopefully turn it into a museum for everyone else to be able to enjoy.
42:07And back at the castle, their work is already starting to bear fruit.
42:14This is Grich's first fully restored room.
42:18Oh, this is lovely.
42:21This is called the chapel.
42:23And we've restored it back to how it would have been
42:25when the Countess died in 1924.
42:28So we've got inventories.
42:30We talk about the red damask.
42:32So this has all been imported from Germany.
42:35And then the artwork gives you a sense of what was here historically.
42:43Here's a big portrait of the Countess.
42:45Yeah.
42:46This was painted when she inherited the castle in the 1890s.
42:50So you kind of learn about the family that lived here.
42:54When you go round, you kind of see lots of dereliction.
42:58But you kind of go round the corner,
43:00and you come into what looks a very palatial space.
43:04You must love it in here,
43:06because it's kind of a glimpse into what you hope the whole thing will feel like.
43:14Grich has many challenges ahead.
43:17But from what I've seen here on this remarkable journey through time,
43:21I believe it can, step by step, and inspired by other castles,
43:25be returned to the Gothic masterpiece it used to be.
43:29And become a fixture in the community
43:32and the national heritage of Wales once more.
43:38So if you're feeling a bit like,
43:40oh, it's overwhelming, I'm never going to do it,
43:42come up here, sit from the fire, chill,
43:46sit in this lovely room, think, yes, it's possible.
43:48It just gives everyone hope.
43:51Exactly, it feels quite hopeful, doesn't it?
43:52Yeah.
43:53Yeah.
43:55Yeah.
43:56Yeah.
44:10Yeah.
44:16Transcription by CastingWords
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