Stansty

Much of the area was farmland until the 20th century and belonged to an estate called Stansty Park, originally a manor in Stansty Uchaf (Higher Stansty) purchased by David ap Meilir in 1317. One of his descendants, John ap David ap Edward (1573-1635) took the surname of Edwards; the family seat, Plas Issa, was built in 1577.[7] His children included John Edwards (b.1612), court physician to Charles I, and Jonathan Edwards (b.1615), Archdeacon of Derry,[8][9] while his daughter Margaret married John Jones Maesygarnedd the regicide.[7] John Edwards (1619–73) expanded the Stansty estate, later known as Stansty Park, until it took up most of Stansty township: however his great-great-grandson, Peter Edwards, died without issue in 1783, and the estate, passing to distant relatives, was eventually sold to the ironmaster Richard Thompson.[7]

Thompson built a new house, Stansty Hall, on the site in the 1830s. The late-Georgian hall at Stansty was later threatened by subsidence from coal mining and was largely demolished in the 1920s - a small section being incorporated into a more modern building - while some of the former estate's farmland has since been developed for modern housing. However, the park's highly elaborate wrought-iron gates, attributed to the Davies brothers of Wrexham, had been rescued and moved to Erddig Hall in 1908.[10]

Though much the estate of Stansty Park has now gone, its name is still used for a modern housing estate near Summerhill and for the ground of Cymru Alliance league football team Lex XI F.C.. The name is also applied to the original 1577 house, Plas Issa, which still stands.[11]

Another of the area's main houses was Plas Coch in Lower Stansty, which was built in the late 16th century in mature hand-made red brick, giving the house its name (Plas Coch translates roughly as "Red Hall"). It was a two storey building: the plan of the dwelling was a typical through passage house with access at either end of the passage. The house was built for Sir William Meredith, one of the sons of Richard Meredith of Allington or Trevalyn (near Rossett) and treasurer and paymaster of the army in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Edward Meredith, a brother to William, was recorded in 1610 as trading as draper in Cheapside, London and he had held the lease on Plas Coch from his nephew for a time. Edward Meredith held the office of the High Sheriff of Denbighshire in 1629.

In 1709 the Plas Coch estate was sold by Sir William Meredith of Kent to Sir John Wynn, 1st Baronet of Gwydir Castle, Llanrwst.

Plas Coch played an important part in the social life of the town, hosting the Denbighshire & Flintshire Agricultural Society Show and the Annual Wrexham Lager Festival. Sadly the house and outbuildings were demolished in the late 1980s to make way for a large supermarket and retail development. The only part of the original property remaining today is a short length of stone wall at the roadside in front of a branch of Homebase. During the construction of the retail development in 1991, a hoard of Roman coins was discovered by workmen: however all of the coins subsequently disappeared.[12] In 1995 further construction work on the site revealed traces of Roman field boundaries, hearths and a corn drying kiln.