ITV bosses face a race against time to get Gwrych Castle ready for the new series of I’m A Celebrity as they kick off a huge renovation programme on the dilapidated building.
The team behind the show, which will shift from the Australian jungle to the country pile in North Wales for a second year running, have lodged an extensive planning application with authorities.
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That will see producers spend the next three to four months pumping millions into ensuring the building is in the best shape for filming to start as usual this November.
A TV insider said: “When it was first announced that I’m A Celebrity was going to be staged in Gwrych Castle the team did a miraculous job of ensuring the building was safe and usable for filming.
“But these new renovations will ramp up the facilities and provide basic amenities which they had to do without in 2020 due to the speed at which they had to make the shift.”
The show’s producers have asked for urgent approval from the local council for the work to go ahead, potentially this summer.
They need to ensure they have a proper supply of electricity into the site and still have to make large areas of the castle watertight.
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Last year the area was battered by a freak deluge of rain that saw large areas of the exposed building swamped, as not all of the rooms still have roofs.
The castle was built between 1810 and 1825 as a country retreat for toff Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh, but fell into disrepair in the 1980s.
It was only rescued in 2018 by a new charity, the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, who were thrilled when ITV staged I’m A Celebrity there as the show’s money is helping to restore the building to its former glory.
Source: The Sun
