Bailey Hill - Mold’s ancient castle.

It was built as a motte and bailey fortification by the family who ruled the area after the Norman conquest. You can see here an impression of what it looked like. There’s another by the gate. The family, who later took the name Montalt used the existing steep hill, a moraine, left there during the Ice Age as a base for their castle. The Welsh name for the town, ‘Yr Wyddgrug’ (‘prominent mound’) implies there was an earlier structure there too. This transformation of the hill was a huge undertaking, and was accomplished by the forced labour of the Norman lord’s serfs. There would have been a wooden tower at the top, the motte, protected by a timber palisade and two level enclosures lower down, the baileys, one where people lived, and the other where they would keep their animals in peaceful times. This dramatic landscape is now obscured by trees, planted there at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As the area was then the frontier between Wales and England, the castle was fought over by the Anglo-Normans and the native Welsh for a couple of centuries; the bloodiest battle taking place in 1144 when prince Owain Gwynedd captured the castle. After Wales was conquered by Edward I in 1282 and the last of the Montalts died in 1329, Mold ceased to be as strategically important and the Bailey Hill area was put to other uses. Even so, High Street was called Bailey Street until at least the sixteenth century. Bailey Hill was used as common land by townspeople until the end of the eighteenth century. Later it passed to the Mostyn family who allowed public access, built a bowling green, and a rustic-style cottage which is the predecessor of the building which stands at the bottom of the hill today. They also started planting the trees. Over the years, bones and other remains have been found on the Bailey Hill site most notably during the making of the bowling green in 1849. The Mostyns sold the site to the the local authority in 1870 and for many years it has been regarded as Mold’s playground: a park with its tennis courts, bowling green and swings. Part of the outer-ditch which is on the right-hand side as you look from the High Street had been filled-in at some point and it was there that the stone circle for the 1923 national eisteddfod was placed. The edges of the castle have been nibbled away over the centuries by new roads and town development. In 2017 a lottery application was launched which aims to revitalise the area, to help local people and visitors enjoy and appreciate this, one Mold’s greatest assets.