Was he a slave brought to live and work at Erddig Hall, Wrexham, by the home's first owner, wealthy London lawyer John Meller, or could he be nothing more than a figment of an artist's imagination?

Jeremy Cragg, house manager for National Trust's Erddig Hall, wonders whether the mystery of Meller's Coachboy will ever be unravelled, writes Nick Bourne from the Web Team.

All Jeremy has to go on is a poem [reproduced below] which was written and added to the portrait 50 years later by Philip Yorke whose family inherited the home from bachelor Meller, a distant relative. At the same time as the text was added, the Yorkes had paintings commissioned of their own staff at Erddig and then they added poems about them too.

The Yorkes were fond of their staff and there are no records showing they had black servants but the Hall's archives show a neighbour at a former house, Sontley, later bought and demolished by the Yorkes, had a so-called 'black boy' in the household.

An x-ray of the Meller's Coachboy portrait in the mid 1990s showed the name John Hanby written on to the canvas but no records of such a person have been found, either as an artist or in the parish burial records at nearby Marchwiel, said to be the burial place of the boy, according to the poem.

The Negro Minstrel

Of the conditions of this Negre,
Our information is but megre,
However here, he was a dweller,
and blew the horn for Master Meller,
Here, too, he dy'd, but when or how,
Can scarecely be remember'd now,
But that to Marchwiel he was sent,
and he good Christian interment,
Pray Heav'n may stand his present friend,
Where black or white, distinctions end.
For sure on this side of the grave,
They are too strong, tw'ixt Lord & Slave

Here also liv'd a dingy brother,
Who played together with the other,
But of him, yet longer rotten,
Every particulars forgotten.
Save that like Tweedle-dun & Dee,
There but in notes, could ee'r agree,
In all things else, as they do tell y'
Were just like Handel and Corelli.

O had it been in their life's course,
T'have met with Massa Wilberforce,
They wou'd in this alone have joined,
and been together of a mind,
Have rais'd their horns, to one high tune
And blown his merits to the Moon.

• Erddig Hall history
• Slavery - local history / links