Plas-yn-Bwl

Located at the southern edge of Caergwrle village on an elevated site above the A 541 (Wrexham Road); situated at the end of the lane partly behind low rubble forecourt walls.

Seat of the Bold (or Bould) family, recorded already in the early C15 as prosperous English settlers in the medieval borough town of Queen's Hope. A Thomas de Bolde was constable of Chester castle from 1433 until his death in 1436 and a Richard Bolde is recorded as Prothonotary of Chester and Clerk to the Crown in the middle of the C15. Sir Richard Bolde, perhaps the same man, bought out no less than seven of the Hope burgesses to the W of Caergwrle Castle from 1430 onwards and by 1461 had acquired a sizeable estate. It is possible that the surviving house represents part of that built by him, although it is stylistically equally possible that the present structure is of early C16 date; whether the present house is that of Sir Richard or that of his immediate successors, it is evident from the quality of what survives that the original house was of unusual sophistication in comparison to other contemporary Welsh gentry houses. The house eventually became a possession of the Yonges of nearby Bryn Iorcyn and by the late C17 the Bulls (as the family had become called) seem to have died out altogether. Edward Lhwyd (in 1699) comments that Plas-y-Bwl was 'anciently a house of good note belonging to ye Bulls' and talks of a former chapel. The surviving fragment consists of a much-altered L-shaped range with an attached stair tower containing a stone newel stair cut off above the first floor. Presumably this represents the solar end of the medieval house, the truncated hall section of which is partly incorporated within a modern kitchen/bathroom extension to the rear. As well as the stair, its ground and first floor entrances, together with further inner and outer entrances all belong to the primary house. These are fine, moulded Tudor-arched openings, of a type common from the mid C15 to the early C16. The house was given new openings to the front c1900 and has been further modernised in the last twenty years.