My home is your castle

It’s not often I find myself fantasising about former British premiers, let alone get to stay in their home – and then I got wind of Hawarden Castle, the Gothic Revival mansion in Flintshire, North Wales, that was home to Liberal British prime minister Sir William Gladstone, formerly a Tory. I do like a prime minister who has the mettle to change their mind, and I like my creature comforts, too, if I am to brave the countryside. Hearing that a wing of the ancestral pile had been turned into a swanky holiday let by Charlie Gladstone, the Grand Old Man’s great-great grandson, and his wife Caroline, I felt I might have struck gold. The pair have form on upscale holiday lets – they’ve turned Glen Dye in the Highlands into smart cottages – plus they founded the homeware store Pedlars, and Caroline’s new brand Gladstone/Hellen sells a pink Fair Isle sweater I’d cash in a relly for – should anyone desire him or her.

Off we went then, my family of four, plus one Significant Other and one urban mutt, to the 6,000-acre Hawarden Estate near Chester. I am partial to a folly and, glimpsing this 19th-century crenellated mansion as we turned up the drive, I felt ready for a weekend of whimsy. Charlie’s parents used to live in the house, but, he says, it was run down, there was little money and “My mother didn’t like it or have the strength of character to push through an agenda of making it nicer. She complained about it and put her head down.” His father, feeling keenly his wife’s malaise, took to the garden.

Charlie and Caroline, who don’t do malaise, have six children aged between 25 and 36, and are “super-passionate about Hawarden”. They duly set about transforming the castle’s west wing from Withnail and I-esque digs occupied by Charlie’s uncle for a peppercorn rent “that was never paid – it was very dilapidated – dry rot, wet rot, no fixed roof, no functional heating” – into a holiday home. The duplex apartment sits above the Temple of Peace, Gladstone’s study, in the main part of the house, where the Gladstones live when they are not in the Highlands.

With Hawarden Castle, the Gladstones are aiming for “a more familial, fun-filled, human version of the Newt and Daylesford Organic”. Wit is their thing and they happily stamp their personalities on everything: Caroline is in charge of colour and textiles; Charlie of art, objects and furniture; their daughter, Tara, of the Walled Garden School’s events. “There is no such thing as good or bad taste in interiors, provided you have confidence of taste,” says Charlie. “We wanted the West End to feel like an extension of our house and for it to be really wonderful.”

The West End is certainly that. For a start, it has five stonking great bedrooms, no duds, with huge beds, one a four-poster, and there are endless roll-top baths. There’s even a sauna in the boot room. In one bedroom, an 18th-century oil of Don Quixote takes up an entire wall – “It took eight men to get it in,” says Charlie, who is the great-nephew of Cecil Beaton, a frequent visitor to Hawarden, along with his beloved sister, Baba. Old and new jive on every floor, Charlie’s insatiable curatorial habits evinced by artworks by Julian Opie, Damien Hirst, David Shrigley, Ai Weiwei, Chris Levine and Yinka Shonibare. But he is mostly proud of his family history, especially of Catherine Glynne, the power behind Gladstone’s political career and, says Charlie, “a brilliant wife and, as her biographer said, an informal genius. I want to reclaim her legacy.” There are many portraits of her in the apartment.

On our first evening, we had a supper of oyster mushroom lasagne and fish and chips in the estate’s lovely pub, the Glynne Arms, in Hawarden village. With its plush furnishings and bold use of colour, it feels much like Hawarden’s interiors. Incidentally, tiny Hawarden village is home to Gladstone’s Library, which is delightful. The UK’s only prime ministerial library, the building and grounds have the peacefulness of almshouses. You can become a member on the day, enjoy the reading room and café, and even stay the night.

Back “home”, we lit the fire in the living room, put a record on the turntable, pushed the family silver aside on the dining table and settled down to a round of Racing Demon. A bit of cheating went on, in full view of both a bust of God’s Only Mistake, as his rival Disraeli liked to call Gladstone, on the table opposite, and a huge painting of the man on the wall.

In the morning, I curled up in a restored Georgian chair and looked out through the mullioned windows at the formal gardens – “a jungle” when the Gladstones inherited Hawarden Castle in the 80s – and the ruins of the 13th-century castle. After a breakfast (that included fresh bread and pastries from the award-winning farm shop), one of the estate managers, Karl Davies, took us on a tour of the keep. We enjoyed fine views of the main house from here and the garden’s slender swimming pond. We could just make out the shadow of Chester Cathedral, too. Happily, we couldn’t hear the nearby A56.

There are plenty of walks on the estate, through woodland and parkland, and guests of the West End can swim in the lake, though sybarites might prefer the hot tub in the private woodland glade or to toast marshmallows in the fire pit. You can rent other properties on the estate, including the Georgian and rather imposing Gardener’s House, and they each have their own outdoor spaces.Since our visit, the Gladstones have completed a network of managed footpaths that offer new public access to hitherto private areas of the estate, inspired by Scotland’s right to roam. But his guests are also uppermost in his mind: “I’ve tried to create zones or layers within the estate for public access so that people staying in the West End, for example, have a really lovely, luxurious, private time and are not surrounded by people out on walks.”

The Walled Garden may be private, but locals would have known we were there from our yelps as we took ice showers after our wood-fired sauna. We’d then go back in the sauna and warm up with hot chocolates brought in flasks provided for us, along with blankets and picnic hamper. The whole weekend was such fun, and yet we did not leave the grounds, save to walk to the pub or stock up from the farm shop. “That’s the whole idea,” says Charlie. “We’ve tried to make the estate somewhere you don’t have to leave.”

Cecil Beaton: A Family Archive is at Hawarden Estate until spring 2026 (hawardenestate.co.uk)