Bordering Offa’s Dyke to the West of Oswestry, Llanforda’s picturesque park is practically all that remains testimony of the seat of the Lloyd and Williams families. Llanforda followed the same descent as the senior Lloyd seat of Llwyn-y-Maen (q.v.) until Robert Lloyd (d. 1508) of Llwyn-y-Maen, who had married a daughter of John Edwards of Plas Newydd, Chirk, divided the properties between his sons. Llanforda went to his eldest son John (d. 1579), whilst Llwyn-y-Maen was inherited by his younger son, Captain Edward Lloyd.

In the early seventeenth century, John Lloyd’s grandson and namesake (d. 1633) was responsible for the timbered Lloyd’s Mansion in Oswestry of 1604, which bears the family’s distinctive double-headed eagle coat of arms. His son, Colonel Edward Lloyd (d. 1653), married Frances, the daughter of Sir Edward Trevor of Brynkinalt, Denbighshire. Perhaps as a show of status, Colonel Lloyd created one of the most important early seventeenth-century gardens at Llanforda after his succession to the estate in 1634. He, like his kinsmen at nearby Llwyn-y-Maen, was a staunch Royalist and, as Governor of Oswestry Castle, he held Oswestry for the Royalists in the siege of 1643. As a result, in 1655 as ‘Ed. Lloyd of llanvardo [sic.], Esq.’ he was compounded for £300. His garden became his solace and, in writing to his mother, he mentioned the wilderness, walks and fountain that he had created.

In spite of inheriting a heavily encumbered estate, his son and namesake, Edward Lloyd (c. 1635–1681) continued the development of the gardens at Llanforda which, by the 1670s included not only the wilderness, but a physic garden and a tulip garden. The extravagance is obvious from the surviving documentation, in which Lloyd noted writing his motto in gold upon a flower pot and employing a black gardener named Samson. In 1679–80 further professional assistance came from Edward Morgan, who had formerly been employed at Westminster Medical Garden and who, with two students, came to Llanforda for a year. Approximately twenty fishponds were established in what is now the park at this time and might have been linked to Edward Lloyd’s investment in North Wales fisheries. Edward Lloyd apparently rented a fishery in the River Dovey which presented him with problems of sales at the markets of Shrewsbury, Whitchurch and Oswestry; these issues were in addition to disagreements with his neighbours in Wales and in Shropshire. The preface Hayward.