house including the facing the west front with stone and moving the bedrooms from the ground floor to the first floor. He was the author of the Royal Tribes of Wales and there is a room in Erddig which features the coats of arms of the chief North Wales families. General John Yorke (1814–1890) was to become from 1861, the owner of the distinctive Plas Newydd in Llangollen, the self-styled home of the famous Ladies of Llangollen. The estate began to decline following the death of Philp Yorke II in 1922 as income diminished and staff were laid off. The house began to decay under his successor, Simon Yorke IV, who became reclusive and failed to install electricity, running water, gas or a phone. Whilst causing damage to the property, this period of neglect ensured that Erddig remained remarkably unaltered. In March 1973, the last squire Philip Scott Yorke, a bachelor, gave Erddig to the National Trust. This followed the collapse several years earlier of a shaft from the nearby coal mine (Bersham colliery) under the house, causing subsidence of , which seriously affected the structural security of the house to the extent that, without suitable underpinning, it would have become a ruin. It was strengthened using the compensation of £120,000 the National Trust was able to extract from the National Coal Board. of Erddig Park (out of view of the house) was subsequently sold for £995,000 and this paid for the restoration work on the house. The restoration was completed on 27 June 1977 when Charles, Prince of Wales officially opened Erddig to the public, joking that it was the first time in his, albeit short, life that he had opened something that was already 300 years old. List of Yorke Squires Simon Yorke I (1696-1767), cousin of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl Of Hardwicke, maternal nephew of John Mellor, married Dorothy Hutton (d1787) Philip Yorke I (1743-1804), son of Simon Yorke I and his wife Dorothy Hutton, married Elizabeth Cust (1750-1779) and later Diana Wynne (d1805) Simon Yorke II (1771-1834), son of Philip Yorke I and his first wife Elizabeth Cust, married Margaret Holland (1778-1848) Simon Yorke III (1811-1894), son of Simon Yorke II and his wife Margaret Holland, married Victoria Cust (1824-1895) Philip Yorke II (1849-1922), son of Simon Yorke III and his wife Victoria Cust, married Annette Fountayne (d1899), and later Louisa Matilda Scott (1863-1951) Simon Yorke