photo #9017742

The wrought iron gates at Chirk Castle announce themselves from the moment you arrive, rising white against the Welsh landscape like frozen lace made from metal and audacity. Robert and John Davies of Bersham created these baroque masterpieces between 1712 and 1721, working from their Croesfoel forge near Wrexham, and the result stands among the finest examples of 18th-century ironwork in Britain. The brothers may have studied under the legendary French smith Jean Tijou, who worked for William III at Hampton Court Palace, and they definitely owned a copy of his pattern book, but what they created at Chirk transcended their influences. These gates weren't functional barriers to keep people out. They were 30 meters of pure showmanship meant to demonstrate exactly how wealthy and powerful the Myddelton family had become.The centerpiece is the Myddelton coat of arms featuring the Red Hand of Chirk, and naturally, there's a legend about it involving a race to inherit the castle where one brother hacked off his rival's hand and threw it across the finish line. The actual story is less dramatic but more interesting. When Sir Thomas Myddelton III was awarded his baronetcy in 1660 after helping proclaim Charles II as king during Booth's Cheshire Rising, he gained the right to add the red hand to his family crest. It's a Badge of Ulster that every baronet in Britain could use, though most didn't make it quite so prominent. The Myddeltons had bought Chirk Castle in 1595 for five thousand pounds, equivalent to roughly 18 million in today's money, and by 1712, they needed everyone approaching their property to understand they had money to burn on things like gates that took seven years to complete.What makes the Davies gates exceptional isn't just the delicate fretwork patterns or the elaborate crestings that seem impossible to create from solid iron. It's that they survived everything North Wales weather and British history could throw at them for over 300 years. The gates still stand at the eastern entrance to the estate, white painted iron gleaming, marking the ceremonial approach to a castle that's been continuously inhabited since 1310. The Myddelton family held onto Chirk through civil wars, changing allegiances, financial hardship, and centuries of shifting fortunes, until they transferred the property to the National Trust in 1981. Those gates outlasted the family's ownership, and they'll probably outlast the castle itself, a testament to what happens when talented craftsmen decide to create something that makes people stop their cars a mile and a half before they even reach the actual fortress.