Kinmel Hall is a country house located near Abergele in north Wales. It is a renovation of a Greek Revival house that previously occupied the same site on the Kinmel estate. The existing house was designed by William Eden Nesfield (1835-1888) for Hugh Robert Hughes (1827-1911) and built between 1871-1876. Hughes inherited Kinmel from his uncle in 1852 and sought to enhance the estate by commissioning numerous improvements to the house and grounds. These improvements included a new stable block designed by William Burn and culminated in the ambitious expansion of the earlier house into the Kinmel Hall that exists today. Nesfield’s remodelling is dramatic departure from the mundane house Hughes inherited.

It has been said that Kinmel Hall has 365 windows and 52 bedrooms, making it an example of a ‘Calendar House’, a term coined by the Elizabethans and employed by the Victorians to celebrate extravagance. With over 120 rooms (one dedicated exclusively to ironing newspapers), Kinmel’s exorbitance has earned it the nickname, the ‘Welsh Versailles’. And although the house’s mansard roofs evoke the flavour of a French chateau, a closer look reveals a variety of influences. The abundance of red brick, stone window surrounds, and stone quoins are reminiscent of Hampton Court Palace—which Nesfield and Hughes visited for inspiration in 1868. However, the more minute details, such as the asymmetrical chimneys and Nesfield’s generous application of his characteristic sunflower motifs, reveal the house’s underlying connection to the ‘Queen Anne’ movement. After being sold by the Hughes family in 1929, Kinmel Hall has served as a rheumatic spa, hospital, and school. A fire caused extensive damage to the chapel and upper floor in 1977, and the house has changed ownership numerous times since. In 2015, the Victorian Society placed the now-derelict Kinmel Hall on its list of the top ten at-risk Victorian and Edwardian buildings in the UK; its future remains uncertain.

This sheet details the placement of iron girders. First used as a form of 'fireproof construction' in eighteenth-century factories, iron girders and brick walls were used extensively in mid-nineteenth-century country houses. However, as it became evident that exposed iron loses its strength quickly during a fire, iron grew somewhat unfashionable in the final quarter of the century. W. E. Nesfield continued to use iron and worked to conceal it, as shown in this drawing.