History

This building, heavily altered in the C19 and C20, originated as Plas Coch, an Elizabethan town house of remarkable sophistication. It is traditionally said to have been built as the town house of Sir Richard Clough (d.1570), the famous merchant adventurer, founder of the London Royal Exchange and partner of Sir Thomas Gresham. Although a native of Denbigh, Clough spent the majority of his working life in Antwerp and (to a lesser extent) Hamburg, where he made a sizeable fortune. When he returned to Wales he introduced various aspects of the architectural vocabulary of the Flemish Renaissance to an astonished Denbighshire. In 1567-8 Clough built the extraordinary Bach-y-Graig (of which the main block has not survived) and also completed Plas Clough, his chief seat; Plas Coch was probably erected around the same time. This, his least well-known house was, like the others, built of imported Flemish brick and given sandstone dressings and crow-stepped gables. A watercolour by Sir Richard Colt-Hoare of 1815 shows the house with a storeyed porch carried on columns, together with cross-windows and cross-banding; stylistically therefore, this record shows the original Plas Coch to have had strong similarities with Clough's two other houses.

Although the present building is mostly later, a remarkable first floor fireplace survives which clearly relates to the primary building. It is in the form of a corbelled chimneypiece, the plastered bressummer and hood of which are supported by very fine Renaissance terms (an atlas and a caryatid) of painted stone. These are too sophisticated to be of local production and were, in all probability, amongst the building materials (including stained and painted glass) known to have been imported by Clough from Flanders. The chamber in which the fireplace is located was clearly of some significance and has been subsequently reduced in size; it is possible that it originally served as the Great Chamber. The plain plastered hood suggests the possibility that a scheme of wall paintings might have formed part of the original interior decoration. Such schemes, often covering all the walls of the chamber, were commonly used to decorate polite interiors during this period.

In the C18 the house passed by marriage from the Clough family to the Wynnes of Melai and served for some time as the town house of that family. The house subsequently became an inn and was named the 'Three Boars' Heads' after their arms. The house received its present appearance as a result of a mid-Victorian remodelling. It has recently been comprehensively restored.

Exterior

Twin-gabled 3-storey building of brick and rubble with renewed slate roofs; cusped and pieced bargeboards with geometric wooden pendant-finials and plain lateral brick chimneys. The ground floor has a large shop-front with a 4-bay shop window to the R and an entrance to its L return. Recessed slightly to the L of this is a large boarded entrance with arched, grilled vent above. This gives access to a passage leading to the rear of the premises. Plain frieze and moulded, dentilated cornice along the whole length of the facade, supported to the L of the passage entrance by a scrolled corbel. Asymmetrical windows to the upper floors: the L gable has a first-floor canted wooden bay with lead roof, whilst the right-hand gabled section has 2 large cross-windows with part-fixed and part-casement glazing; 2 further, similar windows to the second floor, with shallow segmental heads and 3-pane lower sections. Between the upper windows is a modern sign bracket.

Interior

The first-floor front-facing room has a 3-bay ceiling with moulded plaster marginal ribbing and boxed, plastered beams. In a rear first-floor chamber is an exceptionally fine Elizabethan fireplace of c1570. This consists of a large projecting plaster hood corbelled-out on a plastered bressummer. This, in turn, is supported on stone Renaissance terms, an atlas figure to the L and a caryatid on the R, with terminating Ionic capitals; the figures rise out of inverted obelisks and have truncated arms voluted at the shoulders. Associated relief decoration includes swags and mask motifs; modern polychromy. Undisturbed lime-hair plaster to the fireplace hood and wall adjoining to the R.

Reasons for Listing

Listed for the special interest of its origins as Sir Richard Clough's town house, one of the earliest brick buildings in Wales, and for its exceptional surviving Renaissance fireplace.

Group value with other listed items in this important town-centre location.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29481432

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Yorkshire West Riding: Leeds, Bradford and the North (Pevsner Architectural Guides / Buildings of England)
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  Old House Handbook 2 Books Bundle Collection (Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair,Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability)
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  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
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  Northamptonshire: Buildings of England Series (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
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  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)