Hay Castle: the keep, the mansion and the King of Hay

The town's own visitor site says the castle opened in May 2022 for the first time in its 900-year history. It repays an hour even if you came only for the books, because it is half of the town's story.

Two buildings on one rise

What you see from the car park on Oxford Road is two buildings joined together. On the left is the Norman keep, which the Hay Castle Trust dates to the late 12th century and the family of William de Braose. Local legend, which the Trust happily repeats, has his wife Matilda building the castle in a single night. To the right is the Jacobean mansion, its roof timbers dated to around 1640 and associated with the family of Howel Gwynne, with Dutch gables and tall brick chimneys that are the castle's real skyline. The Trust's line is that the mansion is all about wealth and status, and it is right.

In the cellar the restoration uncovered an early arched gateway that predates the 13th-century gateway beside the keep, and in 2017 archaeologists dug up a stone trebuchet ball, probably fired at the castle in the 13th century. It is on the first floor of the tower, and the staff call it Colin. One side of the old gates dates from about 1340; the other is a mere 350 years old.

The King of Hay

The 20th century was rough on the building. A fire in 1939, when the Guinness family were renting it, destroyed the eastern section and left half of it roofless. In the 1960s Richard Booth bought it and made it the hub of his book trade, shipping books in by the lorryload and encouraging others to open shops; it was this, the Trust says, that turned a quiet border market town into a book town. In 1977 he declared Hay an independent kingdom and himself its king, with his horse as prime minister. Later that year another fire brought the roof down, and the building spent much of the 1980s as a building site.

The restoration

Booth put the castle up for sale in 2011 and the Hay Castle Trust was formed to keep it as a public building. A National Lottery Heritage Fund grant came in 2016, the builders started in July 2018, Covid slowed them down, and four years later the castle opened on 26 May 2022, the first day of that year's Hay Festival, with Shakespeare's Globe performing Julius Caesar on the lawn. Today the Trust runs it as a centre for arts, literature and learning, with exhibitions in the gallery, talks, workshops and films.

Visiting

• Hours: 10am to 4pm every day, per the Trust's visit page and home page. One of its pages still says 5pm; plan on 4.
• Price: £7.50 for an adult, and the ticket lasts a year, so a second visit is free. Under-18s go free, Art Fund members pay £3.75, and Historic Houses members and Friends of Hay Castle get in free.
• Free: the Great Hall, the shop and the cafe cost nothing to walk into.
• Tours: daily at 11am and 2pm, depending on volunteers, at £12.50 including entry. They go down steps to the cellar.
• Dogs: on a lead, welcome on the ground floor, in the cafe and in the grounds.
• Access: a lift reaches every floor except the cellar, and the cellar film is also on iPads in the Reading Room. Accessible toilets on the ground floor and the first floor. Disabled bays are at the top of the Oxford Road car park, with level access over the zebra crossing and a ramp at the top of the drive.
• When not to go: in 2025 the Trust closed nearly all of the castle during the Hay Festival Winter Weekend, so check before you go on 26 to 29 November 2026, and on some wedding days.

Around the castle

The castle cafe on the ground floor serves brunch from 10am to 11.30am and lunch from noon to 3pm, with deckchairs on the lawn in summer and the fire lit in winter; book a table by phone. The Thursday market spreads out below the castle, from Memorial Square through the Cheese Market and Butter Market halls to the Clock Tower, from 9am to 2.30pm. Richard Booth's Bookshop, which carries his name, is two minutes away on Lion Street, and the Offa's Dyke Path to Hay Bluff leaves from Oxford Road at the bottom of the drive.