Redevelopment and Discoveries
The Bailey Hill Tripartite Group were successful in securing £1.4 million pounds to redevelop the park. The main aims of the redevelopment were:
- To enhance the entrance to the park from the High Street to improve the access to site.
- To create new interpretation panels for the park explaining the history and importance of the site.
- Develop the Custodians Cottage into a multi-purpose community space.
- Create a new performance space on the inner bailey.
- Restore elements of the original 1920’s public park and period landscape features.
In February 2020, TG Williams, a local contractor from St Asaph started work on site. The work was scheduled to take 26 weeks, with the completion date set for August 2020.
Due to a vast amount of the redevelopment work taking place at the entrance of Bailey Hill, T.G. Williams created a temporary access to the park via the Kings Christian centre by building a wooden bridge over the adjoining wall. This allowed the park to remain open to the public through the redevelopment work with the site only closing once for a period of 5 days.
In March 2020 as a consequence of Nationwide Covid-19 restrictions, redevelopment work ceased on site for 7 weeks. Work was able to resume again on May 11th 2020.
In the summer of 2020 under archaeological watching briefs (by Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust) during the development work at Bailey Hill some very interesting and unexpected discoveries were uncovered.
2020 Discoveries
A possible defensive wall and floor levels of a building were found at the base of Motte. Dated by associated 12th/13th century pottery sherds the large ashes deposits indicate the building was likely to be a kitchen range.
Elsewhere on the site a large 3metre thick defensive wall, possibly Norman, was found, due to the size and thickness this is likely to be the outer defensive wall of the castle.
Historically it was believed that a stone structure had been erected on the top of the Motte but the rest of the site had wooden palisade defences and buildings. The large amount of stone structures discovered would indicate that the Bailey Hill site played a far greater role in the history of the area than previously thought and considerable time, effort and money had been spent to fortify the site.
Seven skeletons were also discovered, six complete and one skull which have been removed from the site and sent for dating analysis. Unsurprisingly historical records do mention that skeletons have been found on the site in the past.
We are keen to display some of the discoveries in the new Bailey Hill Centre.
