Marford is a small village on the old Chester road just north of Gresford, and it looks unlike anywhere else in the district. Most of its cottages were built in a whimsical Gothic style in the decades around 1800 for the Trevalyn Hall estate, with pointed windows, curly bargeboards and, again and again, the shape of a cross worked into the windows and walls.
The village explanation for all those crosses is a ghost. In the early 18th century Rofft Hall, nearby, was the home of George Blackbourne, the steward of the Trevalyn estate, and his wife Margaret. In September 1713 Margaret died. The story that has come down is that George killed her. The coroner who looked into the death was, it is said, a relative of his, and he decided it was an accident. George lived on and married again; he was buried at Gresford church on 4 November 1725.
Margaret, the story goes, did not rest. Her ghost was seen in the lanes of Marford and would come to the cottages at night and tap on the window glass. When the estate rebuilt the village, the crosses were put into the new houses to keep her out. As the story was retold, her name wore down: Blackbourne became Blackbird, and she is now remembered as Lady Blackbird.
The Trevor Arms in Marford claims her as one of a crowd of ghosts, alongside a cavalier, a young girl, a woman by the fireplace and a Victorian man with mutton chop whiskers said to have been kicked to death by a horse in the stables. The crosses may just as well be an 18th century landowner's taste for the picturesque. The tradition of the murdered wife is old and persistent, but the murder itself is unproven.
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