Gwydir Castle, a fortified manor house dating back to c1500. Photo / Getty Images
Gwydir Castle, a fortified manor house dating back to c1500. Photo / Getty Images
With its ornate wood panelling, moulded ceiling beams and magnificent plaster fireplace the oak parlour at Gwydir Castle was certain to attract the eye of any visitor.
Indeed, when the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst toured the 16th Century Tudor mansion in the early Twenties he liked it so much he bought the room for himself.
Hearst had the entire fittings of the parlour, also known as the billiard room, packed up, shipped over the Atlantic and installed in his luxury apartment in Manhattan - then regarded as the largest in the world.
But when Hearst's Clarendon building on the Upper West Side was partially redeveloped in 1930, the Gwydir Castle billiard room was removed, packed away and placed in storage. And that was the last anyone heard of it.
The castle's current owners have now issued an appeal to get their parlour back, in the hope that someone, somewhere will recognise these archive photographs of the interior fittings and provide a clue as to their current location.
"We'd really like our room returned and restored to its rightful place," said Judy Corbett, who together with her husband, Peter Welford, runs Gwydir Castle as a visitor attraction, bed and breakfast and wedding venue.
Locating the missing room would be the last chapter in their long running quest to to restore the Grade 1 listed building in the Conwy Valley, North Wales, to its former grandeur.
Mr Welford and Ms Corbett bought Gwydir Castle as a shell in 1994 and have since spent hundreds of thousands of pounds rebuilding it.
It took ten years just to complete the roof, replacing all the tiles and rebuilding the 13 crumbling chimneys. All the lead flushing and to be replaced and the brickwork of the castle walls renovated and repointed.
American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Photo / Getty Images
Ms Corbett and Mr Welford also had to rebuild the porch and relay sections of the missing floorboards at the castle, which was being used by squatters for rave parties until they bought it.
Each of the 40-odd rooms was then decorated in the original tudor style and furnished with 16th and 17th century pieces.
Some of these were original to Gwydir Castle, which the couple managed to trace across the UK and USA from records from the same 1921 sale of its contents attended by Hearst. Others were acquired from collections, sales and antique shops across Britain.
Now they have turned their attention to tracking down the greatest prize of all, the missing oak parlour.
Ms Corbett said: "The parlour was bought by William Randolph Hearst in 1921. He ended up assembling it in his billiard room in his apartment in New York.
"The apartment was partly demolished in the 1930s and we know the panelled rooms were taken out and stored. This is where we lose track of it. Where did our room go?"
Ms Corbett speculates that the Hearst family might either have held onto the billiard room fittings, sold them on or perhaps even donated them an American museum.
"We have spent years looking through archives and records but can find no trace of it anywhere," she said.
One reason for optimism is the fact that the panelling and fittings of the dining room at Gwydir Castle, which were also bought as part of Mr Heart's purchase of much of the contents of the Welsh mansion, were discovered by Ms Corbett and Mr Welford languishing in a Metropolitan Museum of New York warehouse in the Bronx.
The couple had traced the 14 crates containing the dining room from auction house records and papers in the Hearst archive.
After paying the museum a nominal fee of $20,000, along with $16,000 shipping costs, they had the dining room fittings, wood panelling and fireplace restored to their original position at Gwydir Castle.
The room, which Ms Corbett's wrote about in her book Castles in the Air, was re-opened by Prince Charles in 1998.
However they have had less luck finding the oak parlour. There is no trace of it in the Hearst family records and the curator of Hearst Castle, in California, - where many of the riches and art work he accumulated are on display - says she has no idea where it could be.
The couple have a hunch the room is still boxed up and languishing in a warehouse somewhere in the United States, among the remnants of the huge collection of art, antiques and memorabilia amassed by Hearst.
The last sighting of the parlour was a photograph of it in-situ at the Clarendon, published in Hearst's magazine The International Studio, shortly before it was removed.
"We're mortgaged up to the hilt and have sunk all we earn and all our life savings into restoring Gwydir Castle," said Ms Corbett. "But the story of the dining room shows that miracles can happen and we would love to find our second missing room."
