into the area with the building of two houses, Bach-y-graig and . He was so rich that in his home area his name became a synonym for wealth. He devised a scheme to dredge the River Clwyd and make it navigable. He was active in astronomy, a patron of the map publisher Humphrey Llwyd of Denbigh and friends with Ortelius. In 1567, he was named "court master" of the London Merchant Adventures, now resettled from Antwerp to Hamburg. He died unexpectedly in Hamburg, some time between March and July 1570, while preparing to bring his second wife, Katheryn of Berain, home to the new house he had built for her at Plas Clough on the outskirts of Denbigh. In local folk-tales of Tremeirchion, Clough is supposed to have been carried off by the Devil, never to be seen again, after being discovered by his wife discussing alchemy and other "godless" subjects at the house he had built for her. Sir Richard Clough and Flemish influence on houses in north-east Wales The Renaissance comes to north-east Wales rather earlier with the building of Bach-y-Graig, at Tremeirchion near Mold by Sir Richard Clough, an extremely wealthy merchant, who established the Royal Exchange in the City of London with his business partner Sir Thomas Gresham. Clough had lived in Antwerp, and upon his return to Denbighshire in 1567 he built Bach-y-graig and Plas Clough. Bach-y-Graig appears to have served as a lodge-cum-office, with large associated warehouse ranges set around a courtyard, the while the more traditional Plas Clough was clearly intended from the outset as his main house. The houses were built in the Antwerp style by Flemish craftsmen and were the first brick houses in Wales. On the evidence of the similarities of these houses with the Renaissance buildings Antwerp and also the Royal Exchange in London, a strong case has been made out that their design should be attributed to the Flemish architect Henrick van Passe. The Crow stepping on the gable, at Plas Clough near Denbigh, is typical of Flemish architecture and was widely copied on the grander houses that were being built in north Wales at this time, such as Plas Mawr (1576–85) in Conwy and Faenol Fawr (1597), near St Asaph. Peter Smith maps the distribution of houses with stepped gables which are concentrated around Denbigh and Ruthin, Conwy, the Menai Straits and the southern part of Merionethshire.