As you drive down into the Felin Puleston car park it is hard to imagine that this was once a thriving community.

The village was born around 1580 when a mill was built there by Piers Puleston, and records of births and deaths in the village date back to the sixteenth century. The population in 1891 was 172 but by 1982 it was just 1.

The road into the car park is in fact the Old Ruabon Road and a map dated 1789 shows this to be the only road going in this direction. The Ruabon Road lay across the field alongside the present road and entered the village across a ford near the present footbridge, then out onto the old turnpike road to Ruabon. When the current Ruabon Road was constructed, the site of the old road was given in exchange.

In the 19th century Felin Puleston was a thriving, very busy self-contained little community with its own general store. The village lay on a main coach route and its inn, The Bear, was a picking up point. The history books indicate that the community grew up around the mill, of which the last building was converted into a chemical factory which was demolished due to an explosion.

Shoemakers, grocers, pipemakers, coachmakers and maltsters all lived in the village. Up until the 1930s there were fifty or more of these pretty stone cottages all owned by the Yorkes. Unfortunately though, it seems that they were not so pleasant inside, for, after a public enquiry, they were condemned and the residents were rehoused. Eventually all the cottages except the one you see today, now owned by the National Trust, were demolished.