Plas Newydd and Baron Hill

Neil was doing another Welsh 3000s training day on the Saturday, so he was quite up for a quieter day on Sunday. And he had a suggestion: there is a locally famous ruined mansion near Beaumaris he wanted to see. I had never been either. And I saw an opportunity: I also wanted to see Plas Newydd (from the inside), inspired by the Madfabulous film. We decided to combine these.

We did Plas Newydd first. I had been on the grounds before; they are lovely. Now we actually went in. None of the film was shot in here, but it was easy to imagine the story playing out in this setting. Glamorous rooms everywhere! And the recent addition: costumes from the film. Just a handful of them, but still very nice to see. I think the costumes department of the film company had a whale of a time with this. 

The house behind a flower border

Glamorous interior

Glamorous Bedroom 

The recreation of the most famous costume for the film

The lawn outside

We had lunch on the lawn, with the lovely views that come with that. And then we headed for Beaumaris. We parked up, hopped into the copse next to the road, and headed in the general direction of the mansion. We immediately found built-up structures. I thought they were parts of landscaped gardens. Lots of rather decorative low walls. When we found some remains of greenhouses my suspicion was confirmed. And we came across the first modest buildings.

After a while we came to sizeable building, covered in big trellises. We figured that must be it. It was quite impressive! We walked in and explored. It was extensive, and sometimes had rather industrial details. There were a bits of engine and line shaft and scoop wheel. And big slate water troughs and features we didn’t recognise. Why does a mansion have that?

It seemed to go on forever. It was much bigger than either of us could have imagined. But after what seemed like forever we saw some highly decorated window frames and an entrance with columns. I was convinced that this was the actual entrance of the mansion. Where we had entered must have been auxiliary buildings. That would explain the machinery. But crikey this was extensive!

Frankly, this part of the mansion was the most impressive. We were both quite chuffed we had finally made it there.

The trellised building we saw first

Unusual structures

This part of the building still had part of a staircase

When we had seen the main mansion he had seen it all. We made our way back and we decided to have a little ice cream stop on the way home. For parking reasons we did that in Menai Bridge and not in Beaumaris. When we were there anyway, we did a little walk around Church Island. Because we could! But then it was time to go home and eat some food. It had been a lovely day!