Tower Hill Abergele

实用信息

• Historical landmark
• 2 kmfrom Abergele center
• 4.6 / 520 reviews
• Abergele

A tower of debated origins

The tower itself is a compact circular drum of local Carboniferous limestone, its walls about 1.3 metres thick, rising from a low battered plinth to roughly 10 metres and standing just 3 metres across. Doorways with segmental heads open on the north and south faces, and a parapet ringed with crenels crowns the top. The original upper floor has long since gone, leaving only the ghost of where it once sat on an offset in the wall, alongside fireplaces and window openings.↗

Its purpose is the part that has never been settled. Listed as part of the picturesque landscape associated with the medieval-revival castle at Gwrych, it was probably built by Bamford Hesketh during his sweeping works to make the estate look more romantic, and is sometimes known locally as the Eleanor Tower. Yet it may also be a rebuild of an older structure, one of a series of watchtowers thought to have kept a look-out along the North Wales coast for approaching ships, including Barbary pirates, with signalling passing from tower to tower down to places like Deganwy and Llandrillo-yn-Rhos. A still more romantic theory reaches back to the 5th or 6th century and Owain Gwynedd's expansion into east Wales, but most observers lean toward the watchtower-and-folly story rather than that legend.↗↗

Views across north-east Wales

The real reward for the climb is what you see when you get there. From the summit the land falls away in every direction: the town and its seafront below, the green folds of the Clwydian Range inland, the Lancashire coast far across the water, and the higher peaks of Snowdonia to the west. Along the path a main stopping point with a bench is widely singled out as a spot worth lingering at, taking in countryside, town and sea all at once.↗↗

The walk up is as pleasant as the destination, winding between farmland and quiet woodland where rabbits, squirrels, sheep and horses are all part of the scene, and the final stretch crosses an open field where sheep often graze right up around the tower.↗

Reaching the tower on foot

The tower is best approached as a circular walk out of Abergele. A popular route starts near the Pen-y-Bont Inn and follows the river bank through the town before climbing steeply, over forest tracks and through gated fields, to the open summit. The whole loop runs to roughly 5 kilometres with around 150 metres of ascent and takes about an hour and three-quarters at a leisurely pace.

If you would rather keep the walking shorter and gentler on the dogs, head straight for Gele Park and playground at the edge of town: a path by the play area leads between the houses and on into the woods, and once you are at the top of the forest a gated field opens onto the tower itself.↗

A note of expectation: the tower is for looking, not climbing. With no floors or steps left inside, you cannot go up it, but you can walk right around it, read the stonework and the crenellated parapet, and soak up the panorama from the field where it stands.↗