Once called ‘the most commodious and elegant apartments for a judge in all England and Wales’ (Lord Chief Justice Campbell, 1855), decay beckoned Radnorshire’s disused Shire Hall into obscurity. Now, aided by an interior hardly Judges Lodging Victorian museum, Presteignetouched by time and original furnishings discarded in attics, extensive research and restoration has re-awakened this ‘Victorian fossil’.
From the stunningly restored judge’s apartments to the dingy servants’ quarters below you can explore their gaslit world. Damp cells remind you of the building’s true purpose, along with the vast courtroom where your imagination in captured by the echoing trial of William Morgan, local duck thief.
Winner of Sandford Award 2005.
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