Our local community

When we bought the property, we didn’t know how much affection the building was held in by the local community. For us, this was always much more than a building – it was an amazing space at the heart of the community, and it seems as though that’s how other people felt about it too.

We had hundreds of people attend our launch or joined our guided tours around the building, including two previous owners, the local MP and Senedd Member, and six county councillors.

Some of the people that came to visit during the Denbigh Open Doors weekend

Esyllt Adair from one of our major sponsors, Clocaenog Forest Wind Farm, at the launch.

It has been fantastic to hear some of the stories that people have shared about their connection to the building. Here’s just a selection of that social history of people who have visited the building have shared:

• County Councillor, Pauline Edwards brought in three telegrams from 1942 from her parents’ wedding reception in the first-floor function room – afterwards, they had a two-day honeymoon in Chester and then her dad went back to war. Pauline’s dad, Eric also did a video of the function room in the 2000s, some 60 years after their wedding reception there
• A man in his eighties told us that he worked on the building as an electrician’s apprentice in the 1950s
• Two people in their 20s said they used to come for an ice cream with their nain (grandmother) as kids on a Saturday morning
• One man in his 30s worked in the kitchens when the restaurant closed in 2012
• There was one lady who was born in Denbigh but has lived in Sweden for over 30 years. After showing her around, she dropped me a text that evening to say that her mum met her dad here
• I posted a picture of the historic staircase on the local Facebook page and got a message from a man to say that he used to play on those stairs as a boy in the 1960s because he was friends with a boy who lived here. He said that he had lost contact with his friend many years ago and asked if we could help. We knew the family that lived here then and so, thanks to that photo, two childhood friends were reunited
• The business and conservation teams at Denbighshire Council have been great supporters of what we wanted to achieve from the very start and, the first time we showed them round, they said, “We had our Christmas party here,” and that seems to have been the case for a lot of people

We’d love to hear how The Talbot, Habit or Forum featured in your life so feel free to please share any stories and photos with us.