The Schizophrenic Castle

As I was paging through the Guardian’s Houses & Gardens section, I stumbled across a listing that captured my attention for three reasons:

• It was an old castle
• It was in Wales
• It was featured on Grand Designs, my favourite UK TV show

I clicked on the link to find this:

An 1720’s castle with a modern addition. Hmmm… I am not sure what to think. First, how did they ever get planning permission to do this, and then how did they merge the two styles and make it not look like a frightening mash-up.

Well, it looks like they’ve kept the original front door and the stair case, but it looks like they’ve stripped out the architectural details in the hall.

The little sitting area indicates it’s in the tower part of the house, but the furnishings are too jarring.

It looks like some of the original detail is remaining in the library, but the bookshelves don’t look very original to me, nor do the shutters. This could have been an amazing dining room, especially when you realize there’s a huge view, but they’ve gone and put a TELEVISION in the dining room! Apparently, the husband designed the table, whose legs are far too fat for the delicate Ghost chairs. The inspiration must have come from the Michelin man.

The kitchen is very modern, not what you’d expect from an old castle. The wife insists that it’s not a custom kitchen, but all off-the-shelf.

The views from the house are pretty amazing. But someone needs to explain this space to me.

I would have like the addition a lot better if they’d used something other than stark white. A shade that blended more with the original stone would have softened this considerably.

Lovely original windows. Completely charmless everything else. And don’t even talk about the curtains and curtain rods.

What I don’t understand is why you would buy an old castle tower/folly and then strip out all of the charm and character. The modern furnishings don’t respect the history of the place.

I managed to find a brief clip of Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs going through the castle with the owners. This is from 2009, when they’d just finished it. The husband is clearly Welsh. Click here to view it (I had trouble embedding it.)

Thoughts?