Local History

The name translates as 'Elwyddan' whose brother was a prince of ancient Powys and was thought to have lived in this part for a time.
The estate became the seat of Sir William Williams (1634-1700) who became the speaker of the House of Commons.
         His elder son became the forebear of the Williams-Wynn family of Winnstay, the most notable of all the gentry families in North Wales.
          The family also rebuilt Gwrych Castle near Abergele in a Gothic and castellated style.
          In 1915 Bodelwyddan Castle and the estate were requesitioned for military purposes. A number of Hospital buildings were erected as an extension of Kinmel Park transit camp.
           In 1920 the army left and the Castle was converted into 'Lowther College' a girls boarding school. The school closed in 1982.
          It was eventually purchased by the Council for £500,000.
         Today the Castle houses an invaluable collection of paintings from the National Portrait Gallery in London while the accomodation part now constitutes one of the largest hotels in North Wales.

Edward Hughes purchased the estate in 1786 and his wife inherited dereclict land, Parys mountain, in Anglesey which was later to become an important source for the supply of copper enabling him to afford a new manor on the Kinmel Estate.
In the nineteenth century the estate was split up and several farms and cottages sold.
19,000 troops, several of them Canadian, were billeted at Kinmel Army Camp during the first world war. At the end of the war the war-weary Canadians, who had survived the worst extremities of warfare in the French Trenches wanted nothing more that to be repatriated. But their promised passage was continually delayed. They lived in squalid and overcrouded conditions and when influenza struck, some of them wasted away. In March 1919 with rumours circulating that the army had other plans for them rather than to be going home, the situation became explosive and they sqabbled among themselves which resulted in violence and bloodshed. They ran amok, setting fire to huts and looting. They were fired upon by their own countrymen and there were five deaths. In the churchyard at Bodelwyddan are the graves of the Canadians who died.

In 1852 Margaret Williams, of William Willaims family, was widowed and returned from Warwickshire to Bodelwyddan.
The Williams' comissioned John Gibson to design a church as a
memorial to Margaret's late husband. It was consecrated in 1860.

St Margaret's Church, otherwise known as the 'Marble Church' with its steeple rising to over 200ft is a prominent landmark.

The wooden lectern is reckoned to be the result of 6,000 hours of work. There are 130 carved portraits in stone both within the church and outside. It also has many kinds of decorative marble used for floor and pillars.

St George's Well was naturally very closely connected to the life of the church and the people of the village of St George from early times.
It had been both a wishing well and a cursing well. I ecclisiastical records made in 1535 we find that offerings at the well and shrine amounted to 26s 8d . At about the same time as St George was considered the tutelar saint of horses the well was much resorted to for its supposed powers in curing horses of their diseases. In the 1700s sick horses were brought from Caernarfonshire and Denbighshire to this well where they threw some water over their backs saying 'The Blessing of God and St George be upon thee' and then offered a groat to the church box.
!5c documention shows a path leading from the church to the well. Up to 1852 the well stood outside Kinmel Park and was the main water supply for the hamlet of St George. When the park was extended in the mid 19c the well was then within Kinmel park.During excavations after falling into ruin and disrepair, A well of 4 to 5 ft deep and 6 ft square was found. The sides were of massive rough stones majority reaching from top to bottom. The bottom appeared to be solid and a well of this size and depth would permit baptism by immersion. Alongside this well was found a smaller but equally deep well with walking space around it which was roughly paved.
The suggestion that the well could be pre Christian results from the proximity of the well and St George to the nearby Iron Age Hill Fort of Pen y Parc or Parc y Meirch as it is known, 3which means 'the park of the horses'.

Under Edward 1st's direction, work was put in hand on the erection of an entirely new stronghold a little to the northwest of Robert of Rhuddlan's motte-and-bailey. Payments for the new operation begin to be recorded on 14 September 1277 and continue without pause until March 1282.
In its earliest stage the work was under the control of Master Bertram, a king's engineer who had entered Henry III's service in Gascony in or before 1248. It is to him and the king that we may owe the general plan of the castle, but he was soon superseded by a younger engineer, Master James, better known to us as James of St George, the future master of the kings works in Wales. He saw Rhuddlan through to its completion and may thus be regarded as the castle's architect.

T he castle is concentric in design, consisting of a very strongly defended inner ward, of symmetrical plan, completely surrounded by a slighter outer ward. On the south-west, this fronts the river, but elsewhere, it overlooks an artificial moat, also walled on the outer side, which was dry apart from a short section south of the castle, probably used as a dock. The inner ward is diamond shaped with a singular tower on each of the sharper angles (north and south), and a gatehouse with a double tower on each of the blunter ones (east and west). Various buildings, including a great hall, kitchens, private apartments, and a chapel, stood in the inner ward against the curtain wall; some traces remain of their foundations. The outer ward too included a granary, stables, a smithy, the treasury and a goldsmith's workshop, but little can be seen of these buildings today.
T here were four entrances to the castle precinct, later reduced to three. The main entrance, still in use today, is at the north-western end of the moat. Another entrance, the Friary Gate, on the south-east, was soon dismantled. Lesser entrances were provided from the river on the west and the dock on the south-west; the latter, like the dock itself, was overlooked by a tower. More information : www.castlewales.com
E dward I laid out his new borough, north of his castle, away from the Norman town and the Friary. The present town largely perpetuates the 13th century plan. The town defences consisted of a pair of banks with a ditch between, as at Flint supporting a timber palisade; stone walls were never provided and probably never intended. Edward I also replaced the bridge, probably damaged during the Welsh campaign, and made strenuous but unsuccessful efforts to have the episcopal seat of St Asaph removed to Rhuddlan.
T he later history of the site was less eventful. The castle came under attack in the Welsh rising of 1294, and again in the Glyndwr rising of 1400, when the town was badly damaged but the castle held out. Rhuddlan was in Royalist hands during the Civil War, until forced to capitulate in 1646. In 1648 it was partially demolished to prevent its further use.