Llantysilio Hall is now a ‘guest favourite’ Airbnb with 14 bedrooms for exclusive use(Image: Llywelyn2000/Wiki)
For more than two centuries a search has been underway in Denbighshire for a missing document that could reputedly unlock a quarter-billion-pound fortune. Over the years grave robbers, chancers, forgers and scammers have been among more than 300-plus bounty-hunters whose eyes lit up at the prospect of unimaginable wealth.
In multiple dead-of-night raids, a churchyard tomb was ransacked by men who put greed before sanctity. As the search widened, large paving stones were lifted at the ruined Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis near Llangollen.
Newspapers revelled in the often-lurid tale as claimants descended on North Wales from across Britain. Tales of the supernatural soon emerged involving ghostly apparitions and chilling prophecies. Yet the entire 200-year endeavour was based on the flimsiest of premises – a dream by a vicar’s housekeeper.
The story centres on the custodians of Llantysilio Hall, an 18th century manor just upstream from the famous Horseshoe Falls, source of the Llangollen Canal. Constructed by a North Wales family of ancient descent, it was rebuilt in the 1870s by Manchester locomotive designer and philanthropist Charles Beyer.
By the mid 18th century the hall was occupied by Thomas Jones, Sheriff of Denbighshire, whose son and grandson went by the same name. The final Thomas Jones, said to be an eccentric man of “retired habits”, died in late 1820, aged around 60. To widespread consternation, his last testament could not be found.
The Staffordshire Advertiser reported: “Having left no near relatives, it is feared that the above beautiful mansion, and the rest of his property, will become the subject of a Chancery suit, though it is generally believed that he has executed such a document.”
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The stakes were high., according to various accounts As well as his house, Thomas Jones left a 700-acre estate estimated at £50,000, plus personal possessions worth up to £18,000, including “several valuable racehorses”. He was also owned property in Llangollen such as the King’s Head, later to become The Royal Hotel. Solicitors offered an extraordinary 500gns reward for the will’s discovery – a sum equivalent to around £80,000 today.
Two years later, the document still hadn’t been located. Complicating matters was the deceased’s surname: half of Wales believed they had a claim.
Everything changed when Oswestry housekeeper Catherine Jones – otherwise known as Kitty Taerty – woke up one morning realising she was due the estate – and knew where the will was hidden. That night she’d dreamt it had been buried with the late Mr Jones, hidden beneath his head.
He had been laid to rest in a stone vault in the graveyard at old St Tysilio’s Church, Llantysilio. Kitty’s dream was to lead to the first of several visits by the “resurrection men”.
In the small hours of February 9, 2022, eight people, including a lawyer and a surgeon broke into the churchyard and exhumed Mr Jones’ body. The London Morning Herald was quick to express outrage: “The coffin containing the body of the deceased was forced open, then taken outside, turned upside down, and the corpse tumbled upon the ground. The body having been interred on December 12, 1820, was of course in a state of great decay, as appeared by the stains and smell left upon the grass.
“The only motive we hear assigned for this outrage is, that a person supposing himself interested in a will, had dreamt that one was deposited under the head of the deceased. Upon this vision of disordered mind, strange as it may appear, an attorney was found weak enough to commit the above outrage.
“He came prepared with a plumber, mason, blacksmith and even two females are said to have been present! The exact state in which the body was returned to the vault is not as yet ascertained, but it is believed that the coffin was left unclosed.”
Nothing was found and the intruders fled. They were subsequently charged by the local magistrate. The incident failed to deter claims on the estate, by now owned by a Major John Harrison, who was to spend his remaining years fighting off spurious claims.
On occasions, documents were mysteriously unearthed. One, produced in 1824, named Joseph Davies, a labourer at London’s Deptford dockyard, as the beneficially. He claimed to have met Thomas Jones by chance in Shrewsbury in 1810. After an act of kindness, Joseph was apparently bequeathed the entire estate via hastily written will drawn up in a room at the town’s White Lion pub.
In court, he was able to summon just one unconvincing witness. Smelling a ruse, the judge noted the writing bore no resemblance to Mr Jones’ hand, declaring the claim an “attempt at the grossest imposition…. founded on the grossest improbabily”. Over the years, many other “relatives” came forward, such as London baker Benjamin Jones who took the matter to court on several occasions.
Towards the end of the 19th century, following more sporadic disturbances of Mr Jones’ tomb, attention turned to a new line of inquiry. Interest focused on a Colonel Anthony Pritchard, said to have died in India in 1808. Some claimants maintained he should have been the real heir through ancient lineage.
Others insisted Thomas Jones had merely overseen Llantysilio Hall on behalf of Col Pritchard while he was away serving in the military. By “exercising some sort of fascination” over the colonel, Mr Jones was said to have been left in charge of his will, only to mislay it.
Whatever the truth – there’s not much evidence – it prompted a new goldrush. By 1912, the “Pritchard Millions” were gleefully reported by contemporary newspapers as being worth £3m-£4m. In today’s terms, this equates to £269m-£359m.
As well as the Lantysilio estate, Col Pritchard was said to have owned the land on which Liverpool Town Hall and Nelson’s monument were built. Other assets included 1,000 acres, properties in Abergele and Rhyl and mining interests in Denbighshire and Flintshire. Via his brother, the family also owned immense tea plantations in India, newspapers reported.
Pulses quickened at the prospect of such riches, and fresh claimants emerged with newly discovered bloodlines. They included Manchester painter Edward Pritchard, who had relatives in Wrexham. After being tipped off by his elderly mother in Rhode Island, USA, he joined 300 other claimants at a special conference in Acrefair, near Llangollen.
This was arranged by a Derbyshire woman who became a leading figure in the fight for the Pritchard millions, at one point reportedly stopping the 1903 auction of Llantysilo Hall. Mary Broadhurst, a widow, fought unsuccessfully for 20 years to stake her claim as the “nearest living relative”, culminating in the Acrefair event in May 1913. Her plan was to pool resources and, on winning, to share the “anticipated showers of gold” equally.
Around this time, the custodian of Valle Crucis Abbey in Llantysilio began reporting strange goings-on. Sometimes in the early morning, sometimes late at night, strangers were “secretly visiting the ruins”. It was said that large paving stones were moved “as if by a heavy crowbar”, mostly in the old Chapter House.
Older residents recalled that relatives of Thomas Jones once lived there and he used to visit at night. The gossip was that he had hidden documents beneath the Chapter House floor, under which ran a stream. Some of the claimed wills were reportedly water stained, bearing “indications of having been kept for some time in a damp place”.
After one disturbance at the abbey, a newspaper noted: “The principal claimant to the estates, a woman, has left the neighbourhood after a long stay.” Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox
Mrs Broadhurst never did win her claim. But the canny widow may have not left Acrefair empty-handed. Each of the 300 claimants was asked to pay five shillings to attend her meeting, to be returned if the case was ever won.
Such was the frenzy over the Pritchard millions, it inspired supernatural intervention. As recorded by a Rev John Simon from local tales, a Llangollen man was one night awoken by a glowing presence that beckoned him to follow. The ghostly figure led him to St Tysilio’s Church where the man heard the words of a prophecy: the squire of Llantysilio would soon die and an interloper would take over the hall.
No one believed his story. But not long after, the squire died from a fever after cutting his hand on broken glass. Curious Clwyd, a website recording the history and folklore of northeast Wales, recounted what happened next.
“At the squire’s funeral, all manner of Jones’ appeared, all of whom shed tears but none of whom anyone in the village had seen before. As the procession began the short distance from the Hall to the church, it was noticed that one of the ‘Jones’ had disappeared.
“The man, it seems, had slipped away from the funeral party and barricaded himself in the Hall, claiming it was his, that the squire had lost the property to him in a game of cards. Thus the second part of the prophecy was fulfilled. What came of this man is not known, but one imagines him being forcefully ejected by assorted ‘relatives’.”
Almost a century after “resurrection men” exhumed Mr Jones’ body, another attempt was made to break open his tomb. It caused a sensation, the story reported across Britain.
On September 18, 1915, six men disembarked the train at Berwyn station, near St Tysilio’s. Each were carrying bags and one was said to be a stonemason. None were particularly discreet, reported the London Evening Standard: “The men were talking loudly as to the object of their visit.
“Churchwarden Joshua Seed, passing the graveyard, heard talking, and saw them clear the ivy from the grave and remove the stone from above the vault. He at once went to Llantysilio Hall and telephoned to Llangollen for police, upon whose arrival the visitors made off. Police Sergeant Jones overtook the party and obtained the names of three of them.
“They stated they were searching for the Pritchard millions claimants, and asserted they had the permission of the vicar of Llantysilio to operate in the churchyard: but this the Rev JS Jones (the vicar) emphatically denies.” Join the North Wales Live Whatsapp community now
Since then, Mr Jones has been allowed to rest in peace, the family’s ornate churchyard vault bearing few signs of its traumatic past. If there ever was a lost will, it was almost certainly not interred with his body. Despite this, the search continues, according to Llangollen Museum.
Online, the museum said the story “remains unfinished”, adding: “Descendants from another branch of Thomas Jones’s family continue to research their ancestry, hoping to establish a legitimate claim to Llantysilio Hall and finally resolve a mystery that has lingered for over 200 years.”
