Castel Coch

 Castell Coch

Following on from this morning's wonderful tour of Cardiff Castle, we headed out to Castell Coch (the Red Castle). Like Cardiff Castle, it was remodelled by William Burges for the third Marquis of Bute - this time as a summer retreat. The base of the castle dates from the 13th century, but when Burges started work it had long been ruined.

Burges rebuilt the outside of the castle between 1875 and 1879 and had designed the interior before his untimely death in 1881. It is said that it was the result of catching a severe  chill during a site visit to the castle.

You enter the narrow main gate into a courtyard of irregular shape, broadly oval. A staircase leads to the upper story when the main rooms are.

In front there is a covered gallery with curious recesses at the base.

We climbed the stairs and went into the Banqueting Hall, with a roof 35 ft high. The decorations are delightful and less over-the-top that at Cardiff Castle.

This is one of the two wonderful archways either side of the door leading further into the castle.

This doorway leads into the two-storey drawing room. The domed ceiling would be worthy of a small chapter house and its lower section is a minstrels' gallery.

You may have spotted the curious figure in the left hand corner of the photo. The castle is currently home to an art exhibition called Squatters by Laura Ford and this black and white bird is one of the Squatters. There were some similar, but larger, figures in the Banqueting Hall which I thought were rather crude and intrusive, but I found this one quite amusing.

The ground floor level had beautiful nature painting on the walls, with birds and butterflies to the fore, as in Cardiff Castle.

A narrow staircase led up to Lord Bute's bedroom, rather small (as in Cardiff Castle), but beautifully decorated.

At the very top was the much larger and grander bedroom of Lady Bute. You can speculate about why that was. Before his death Burges had created an outline model for the room's structure, which survives, but he did not leave detailed plans for its decoration. His team attempted to fulfil his vision for the room—their watch word was "would Mr Burges have done it?" I think they did pretty well.

Returning to the first floor outside gallery, we looked down on another Squatters exhibit. The child-sized figures in armour, but all presumably dead, was a very good piece of work and quite unsettling.

Further round the gallery this shadowy and rather sinister figure also made an impact.

Conditions: grey and cool.

Rating: five stars. A small but wonderful castle. Several of the Squatters enhanced the experience.