Plas Teg stands a little back from the main road between Mold and Wrexham, a tall, square Jacobean house with a corner tower at each end. Its name means fair house. It was built around 1610 for Sir John Trevor, a courtier, and was one of the most up to date houses in Wales in its day. It stayed with his descendants for centuries, passing to the Trevor-Roper family, but after the Second World War it was empty and decaying. From 1986 it was bought and patiently restored by the antiques dealer Cornelia Bayley, who opened it to visitors and did much to spread its reputation.
That reputation is enormous. Writers and paranormal groups speak of up to fifteen ghosts. The one with the most story attached is Dorothy Trevor. In the usual version she was a daughter of the house who fell in love with Iorwerth, the son of a local farmer, a match her family would never allow. The two planned to run away together. Before leaving she hid her jewels in a well in the grounds, meaning to collect them on the way. In the dark she slipped and fell into the well and drowned. Her body was not found for some time. She is now said to wander the grounds, and a woman seen stepping out into the traffic on the A541 near the gates is often identified with her.
A second story concerns Elizabeth Frances Trevor-Roper, who is said to have died in 1815. The versions differ: some say she killed herself after her favoured suitor was killed in a duel, others that she was pushed down a well. A later Sir John Trevor is said to have died after crashing his carriage into a tree while drunk, having killed his unfaithful wife shortly before, and to haunt one of the rooms. Visitors describe dogs refusing to enter certain rooms, being pinched, grabbed and hugged, and having their clothes tugged. The house is also said at one time to have been used as a courtroom, and some ghosts are linked to that.
The family history is real; the individual ghost stories are mostly 20th century and later, differ from one teller to the next, and cannot be checked against records in the sources found. The record is tagged single_report on that basis.
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