Saving the past for the future: The rise and fall of a Welsh Marches house

This is the story of a little known house with a big and forgotten history in the North of Wales.

Plas yn Bwl House is a Grade II* building located in a prominent location overlooking the historic Welsh village of Caergwrle in Flintshire. It is adjacent to the medieval castle and has far-reaching views to what were once the important medieval fisheries and mills of the Dee Estuary and the Wirral to the North. The ancient palatinate state of Chester is 11 miles to the North East.

To all intents and purposes from the front it looks like an early Victorian sandstone house with large sash windows and thick Welsh slates on the steep roof. The only clue is that lovely humped ridge hiding the crooked ancient oak trusses beneath. At the back, however, it nestles deep into the hillside and an ancient landscape of meadows, streams, ponds and dry-stone walls. From here it can be better understood: a square tower houses a stunning stone spiral staircase, and the massive scars of walls that once continued out to form a medieval hall with solar above are still visible.

We bought Plas yn Bwl in 2018 – a forgotten and neglected piece of history – and have spent 6 years resurrecting both its narrative and fabric. In 2023, with the support of Clwd-Powys Archaeological Trust, we revealed the entire extent of the medieval hall, which had remained buried and undiscovered for many hundreds of years. You can view the photogrammetry here.

With its square tower, stone spiral staircase with remnants of ironmongery for heavy fortified doors, it is possible that we are caring for the remains of a rare Welsh tower house or fortified manor, a theory made more likely when the history of the house is understood.

The earliest reference to the house appears in P.C. Bartrum’s Welsh genealogies. An online version of his family trees can be found at FamilySearch and entries on this suggest that the house dates from the 1350s. However, others including Cadw – the Welsh body responsible for listing heritage sites – describe it as late medieval. What is certain is that it formed part of one of the estates of the Boldes, Bowldes or de Boldes. The de Boldes were a family of knights with their ancestral roots stretching back to the 1100s and their ancestral seat at Bold Hall in Lancashire. In earlier references to the house it is called Plas y Bowld – the mansion of the Boldes – and the name probably mutated to Bwl as a result of a misunderstanding when in 1699 it was described by Edward Lhwyd in Part I of Parochialia as Plas yn Bwl ‘belonging to ye Bulls.’ (p.96) No Bulls have been identified.

What has become increasingly clear during research is that Plas yn Bwl did not start life as a Welsh gentleman’s house, and that the Boldes were a family intrinsically linked with the repression of the Welsh and the Marcher lordship system and this is the reason for its semi-fortified status with metre thick stone walls and a tower – it was potentially to protect the family from the Welsh. The Boldes had close connections with the powerful Stanley family, later the Earls of Derby, and by 1401 Sir John Stanley was granted the Marcher lordship of Hopedale by Henry IV. Hopedale incorporated the medieval villages of Hope and Queen’s Hope with its castle, later Caergwrle, so this was undoubtedly the catalyst for the Boldes’ presence in the village. By 1403 Sir John and Thomas de Bolde were fighting as Lord Stanley’s knights to combat the uprising of Owain Glyn Dŵr. Later, perhaps rewarded for their loyalty, the two brothers or half-brothers, were serving as Constables of Conwy and Chester castles respectively.

It appears Plas yn Bwl fell on hard times and went into decline. It is possible that from the late 1400s the Earls of Derby and the Boldes attentions were distracted by the Wars of the Roses, and certainly by 1536 the Act of Union which incorporated Wales into England also abolished the Marcher lordship system. According to Bartrum and also Jacob Youde William Lloyd (Vol III, pp.36-37) around 1430 an heiress, Janet Bolde, had inherited the house and with her marriage to Jeffrey Whitford or Chwitfford, ownership left the Boldes. Later, with another heiress, Margred Chwitfford, marrying into the Griffiths of nearby Brymbo Hall, the house was subsumed into the estates of the Griffiths. By 1699, when Lhwyd described the house, it was owned by the Yonge family of the nearby Bryn Iorcyn estate and remained a part of this estate up to the early 20th century.

Plas yn Bwl has remained unassuming and silent, quietly sinking into its landscape over the centuries. Although it has no voice, it has found its way into two images from 1742 and 1795.

By the late 1970s, despite being part of the curtilage of the main house, the four cottages were demolished and the area to the side and in front of the house redeveloped as a small estate of houses. At around the same time the family who then owned the main house (the two surviving cottages) were given a council grant to rectify what were undoubtedly sub-standard living conditions. Sadly, during this process flagstone floors, hearths and ranges were removed, a new concrete floor with a plastic damp proof membrane was laid throughout and all internal walls were given a thick coat of cement render.

We have been custodians of Plas yn Bwl House for six precious years. During our stay we’ve reconsolidated the house as one, repaired the roof and chimneys, replaced rotten lintels, repointed with lime, stripped out all the cement render from the internal walls, had new sash and casement windows made, opened up the main fireplace and installed a multifuel burner, sourced flags for the floors and much more. We’ve worked with the local conservation officer, a conservation architect, architectural historian and archaeologist to reinterpret the house and place it back in its historical landscape. We hope our interventions and love have stopped the decline and fall and will begin its rise as the important house it once was.

Plas yn Bwl House is now for sale at auction – you can find it here. We would love its next custodians to have the empathy and vision to continue the journey we began.