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Horsley Hall, Gresford

Jacobethan style house with formal gardens

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 27, 2025
Entity authorityQ55613959 ↗
Source-derived summary

Horsley Hall was a Jacobethan-style house with formal gardens, near to Gresford, Wrexham County Borough, that was destroyed in 1963.

Pre-Victorian era

The first house built on the site around the early fifteenth century by Ieuan ap David ap Madog ap David Hen of Burton, otherwise known as Dafydd Hen of Burton. Ieuan Llwyd ap Gruffydd ap David Fychan inherited the hall followed by Howel ap David ap Gruffydd Fychan of Talwrn. The children of Howel ap David ap Gruffydd Fychan of Talwrn adopted the surname Powell. A succession of the Powell family owned the hall. Members of the Powell family who owned the hall included, in about 1540, Thomas Powell, the Constable of Holt Castle, who built 'Plas Y Horsli' a timber building surrounded with a moat on the site.

In 1792, John Hughes possessed Horsley Hall, with it passing to Dr Francis James Hughes. Townshead and Frederick Potts jointly bought the hall, but through a deal, Frederick Potts became the sole owner.

Late Victorian era

In about 1875, the owner Frederick Potts demolished the timber building and replaced it with a stone building. He resided at the hall until his death in 1898.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Horsley Hall, Gresford” as jacobethan style house with formal gardens. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Horsley, Hall and Gresford.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1963, 1540, 1792, 1875—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Horsley, Hall and Gresford providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Horsley Hall, Gresford”, the useful work is to connect “jacobethan style house with formal gardens” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q55613959. Authority coordinates are 53.089, -2.949. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1540, 1792 and 1875.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Horsley Hall, Gresford primary sources, Horsley Hall, Gresford archive and Horsley research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Horsley Hall, Gresford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.