Pale Hall

Palé Hall was the home of Scottish railway pioneer and engineer Henry Robertson, who had come to North Wales as a young man in 1842. Robertson, a pupil of Robert Stephenson, was a contemporary of the equally illustrious younger Stephenson, George. Apart from extensive railway-building in Wales and the border counties (including viaducts on the Shrewsbury-Chester line at Chirk and Cefn Mawr — even the great Stephenson had been unable to carry through the difficult crossing at Cefn), it was under Robertson's direction that steelmaking was established at what had been the Iron Works at Brymbo. Robertson had also been a Liberal MP, first for Shrewsbury then Merionethshire. He died in 1888, so did not live to see the Queen's visit to Palé the following year — that pleasure (or duty?) fell instead to his son, Henry Beyer Robertson, upon whom the Queen conferred a knighthood during her visit, partly in recognition of his father's services to the development of North Wales. Sir Henry lived at Palé until his death in 1948, having continued his father's many enterprises: the Brymbo Steel Company's undertakings, the Minera Lime Company and the Broughton & Plas Power and other collieries occupied his attention, but he was also a partner in the Beyer Peacock company of locomotive builders in Manchester, and on the board of the Great Western Railway for more than half a century.

Reference           The Building News 3 July 1875 with illustrations