Landscape History Today:

the Bulletin of CSLH

September 2012 Number 51

Parish Church in the village of Beetham, South Cumbria Contents

Chair’s Message 3

A slice of French history and landscape 4

From our library: Mersley Park, Holt 6

Greenfield Valley 12 Lifelong Learning 17 A Day of Discovery 18 Field Visit Reports 21 Publications 36

Dates for the diary

Members may be interested in the following events ... Saturday 27th October - CLHA History Day Saturday 8th December - Maps and Travel Writing in the North West CNWRS, Lancaster University Saturday 19th January 2013 - Transport and Landscape History in North West , 1650-1900, CNWRS, Lancaster University

Editor: Dr. Sharon Varey Email: [email protected] Web: www.chesterlandscapehistory.org.uk

Page 2 Chair’s Message

Welcome to our new look ‘newsletter’. For quite a while, members of our planning team have felt our ‘newsletter’ was far more than the name implied, and so earlier this year we decided to rename our publication. After much discussion and many emails a new name was chosen. I hope you are pleased with the end result and will all continue to contribute articles, reports, photographs and suggestions to our new publication.

Publications have certainly been at the forefront of our activities in2012. Landscape History Discoveries in the North West is in the final stages of publication as I write. The official University book launch will take place on Thursday 18th October at Gladstone’s Library and our own Society book launch has been fixed for Monday 29th October. Look out for your invitation in the post. Our launch will follow Elizabeth Davey’s lecture and will be accompanied by wine and nibbles. I would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by the end of September so we can ensure there are enough nibbles for everyone!

All too soon the summer holiday season has passed and our autumn lectures resume on Monday 24th September. Those of you who attended the residential in 2011 will remember Duncan James’s fascinating guided walk around Presteigne. I urge anyone interested in our black and white building heritage to come along and listen to Duncan ‘make the houses talk’.

September also sees the publication of The Medieval English Landscape 1000- 1540 by our illustrious president and we are hoping that copies will be available at our September lecture. I hope to see you there.

Finally, it is with great sadness that we heard that one of our members, Judith Sheppard, passed away earlier this year. Our thoughts are with her family.

Sharon Varey

Page 3 A Slice of French History and Landscape

During a recent holiday in France, Kay and I visited the oppidum or fortified hilltop settlement of Ensérune off the N9 near Narbonne. It is adjacent to the via Domitia (Domitian Way) and for many centuries it was the centre of trading routes to places as far away as Greece. It is claimed to be one of the most important pre-Roman sites in Europe and is famous for its size and the number of artifacts found. The oppidum was occupied from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age to the beginning of the first century AD. The several occupations and changes to the area are well illustrated in the excellent site museum, which also contains many artifacts found on the site.

Kay and I were particularly struck by the landscape views from the top of the Malpas hill (bear in mind the literal French interpretation of the name) on which the oppidum is situated. In the plain below there is a view, which has to be seen to be believed and is perhaps the most amazing landscape view to be seen in Western Europe. For an alternative view see Google Earth although an oblique view is the most impressive.

Figure 1 Étang de Montady - viewed from Ensérune.

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The landscape is dominated by the drained area of the former Étang de Montady. This lake was drained in the thirteenth century by order of the Archbishop of Narbonne, although which one we have not yet discovered. The water was drained through what must have been similar to a well into a culvert 30 metres below ground level and 1300 metres long. The precise construction details are difficult to come by, but, for the age in which it was built, it must have been a most difficult enterprise. The result of this drainage is a saucer shaped area in excess of 400 hectares (about 2-3 kilometres in diameter). The area is divided up into triangular-shaped sections by radial ditches that feed the run-off water to the central point. This feature is not unlike the ‘cup and saucer’ feature at Erdigg near but on a much larger scale.

However, the story doesn’t end there because in the late eighteenth century when the Canal du Midi was being constructed, the chief engineer, Pierre-Paul Riquet was inspired by the drainage culvert under Malpas Hill to propose that the canal should follow a similar route, but over the culvert, and this became the first canal tunnel in France (Figure 2 Canal du Midi tunnel). In 1856 a tunnel was also excavated through the hill, for the Béziers to Narbonne railway line.

Figure 2 The Malpas tunnel on the Canal du Midi.

John Whittle

Page 5 From our library: Mersley Park, Holt

The CSLH library contains over 200 periodicals, pamphlets and text books which are available on free loan from the Honorary Librarian (Ray Jones). This article is written to draw members’ attention to this valuable resource by outlining the content of just one article in our collection supplemented by additional material on the subject researched by the CSLH librarian.

Andre Berry, ‘The Medieval Landscape of Holt, ’ Newsletter of the Society for Landscape Studies, Autumn 1994.

The paper studies the landscape of the medieval parks of Mersley and Little Park and the common wood of Holt. All lay within the newly created borough of Holt established after Edward I’s final conquest of in 1282. A newly built at Holt was the caput of the newly established of Bromfield and Yale: John de Warenne, the earl of Surrey. His marcher lordship extended to the crest of the and westwards to Bryneglwys. Thus de Warenne’s new castle and borough at Holt were on the eastern margins of the marcher lordship and sited to control a ford or ferry across the River Dee. The present bridge is thought to have fourteenth century origins.

The new borough was granted a weekly market and two annual fairs. Additionally the burgesses had access to housebote and haybote from the common wood of Holt. They also had rights to dig sea cole (coal) and turves (peat) in the hill areas of and around 9 kilometres to the west of the village.

Place name evidence suggests that this area of the lower Dee valley, covered by heavy glacial boulder clay, was wooded and ill-drained at the time of the Mercian settlement in the seventh or eighth centuries. This is reflected in names such as Horsley, Hoseley, Ridley and Mersley with the suffix -ley denoting woodland clearing. The name Holt itself means a wood and the adjacent township of : below the wood. The Cheshire Domesday entries

Page 6

for Allington and Sutton in Exestan hundred also indicate the presence of woodland in this area. Marshy locations are denoted by the place name Morton and Hugmore with mor representing a poorly drained area. From this ill -drained wooded area the new borough was laid out by absorbing lands from the townships of Hewlington, Eyton Fawr, Eyton Fechan, Oderay, Crewe Parva and Morton. Freeholders of these settlements were compensated with demesne lands in the nearby bonded (unfree) settlements of and Hoseley. A riverside settlement had previously existed at Holt in Roman times when a tile factory and brickworks was established on the banks of the Dee at Holt. The settlement is not thought to have been named Bovium as described in Berry’s article.

Unlike its large near neighbour Wrexham, the medieval borough experienced rapid growth with 159 English burgesses by 1315 and a population of 600 at the time of the Black Death in 1349, larger than that of Wrexham. Wrexham, on the other hand evolved slowly from a Mercian riverside settlement into a ‘maerdref” (court) of the Princes of Powys becoming a non-chartered ‘villa mercatoria’ by the fourteenth century but never achieving borough status in medieval times. There was still sufficient population in Holt to repel an attack by the men of Owain Glyndwr in 1402. Glyndwr’s forces had just left Wrexham in a ruinous state having burned most of the dwellings there. Holt later decayed and once more was eclipsed by Wrexham and finally lost its special municipal status in 1886. Weekly markets had ceased by the mid-sixteenth century and the last fair was held in 1872.

The common woodland around the new settlement was cut for timber framed house construction, roof shingles and fuel. In 1907, the eminent local historian A.N. Palmer deduced from documentary evidence that by 1411 little woodland was left. This land was cultivated throughout the medieval period. Much of the cultivated land was set in closes enclosed piecemeal by agreement. However, a considerable area of the common wood remained unenclosed until 1848 when an Enclosure Act redistributed the remainder giving rise to the landscape still visible today. The sixty-four allotment fields dating from the nineteenth century enclosures are still in evidence enclosed by hawthorn hedges (Plate 1).

Page 7 Berry poses the question as to whether the park at Mersely was pre 1066 and assimilated by the Anglo Normans or whether it was a new creation by the incoming marcher lord after the final conquest of Wales in 1282.

Mersley Park was the largest of six such parks in the Marcher lordship of Bromfield and Yale. The park lay in the pre 1086 township of Allington which formed part of the ancient multi-township parish of . Berry states that the park at Mersley was ‘immediately disparked’ with the creation of the new borough. However, this is the only indication in the article that a park was already in existence on the site in 1282.

A possible clue to an early park on this site is contained in the Domesday survey of which includes a number of areas now lying within the borders of modern day North Wales namely the pre 1282 Welsh commotes of Ial (Yale), Nanheudwy ( and ) and Cynllaith (Llansilin).

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In The Place-Names of Shropshire (part 2), Gelling includes Marsley as a hamlet within the parish of Habberley. Pratt has suggested that Marsley may be synonymous with ‘Mersley’ in Allington township, the site of the medieval hunting park sometimes also known as Holt Park. In the Shropshire Domesday survey, ‘Marsetle’ is mentioned in a list of feudal duties of the burgesses of when William I was in the town. When hunting ‘ad parcum De Marsetle’, thirty-six mounted men were to be provided to protect him for eight days according to custom. This suggests that the hunting park concerned existed prior to 1086. Pratt suggests that such a degree of protection and the time involved indicates that the hunting park may have been some distance away. Mersley translates as ‘clearing of the boundary’ and nearby Marford is ‘boundary ford’. Marsetle can be translated as either ‘clearing of the boundary dwellers’ or a ‘boundary clearing with a dwelling place for animals’. The above poses the question as to which boundary is referred to. It may be the physical boundary to the north marked by Burton Marsh and Pulford Brook which still divides England from Wales. Gelling placed the park in the Wrexham area. The park at Allington is thus a possible location for this ancient park and is referred to as a park in documents from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

In his article, Berry goes on to make a detailed analysis of the landscape of the lands and liberties of the borough of Holt after 1282. He cites Tewderley’s Survey 1540-45 which described the park as flat, paled all round and containing 160 deer. It was mostly under grass with a little woodland in the form of a coppice. The park had an area of over 625 acres. The park keeper lived in a ‘pretty lodge’. By 1595 the park was showing signs of neglect with much of its area being rough land covered with bushes and thorns and alder marsh. The pale was in need of repair and unable to contain the deer of which over 190 existed in the park and the surrounding area. The existing Lodge Farm is of seventeenth century origin. A plan provided with Norden’s Survey of 1620 names four gates: Broadway Gate, Wrexham Gate, Bellis’ Gate and Probyn’s Gate.

Other documents throw further light on the decaying park during the sixteenth century. Edward (1580-1620), a local bard, wrote a poem in 1598 preserved in the Jesus College MS that carries an extended title: ‘To one that stole a pigge from Marslie’. The bard described the thieves as two women of

Page 9 the prominent Trevor family, notably Lady Katherine Trevor and her daughter Mary of Trefalyn Hall, where the demesne land was adjacent to the Mersley Park. No prosecution followed but the poem reflects a change of land use within the park with it being used for the grazing of pigs. With the pale in disrepair clearly pigs passed freely through its boundaries and Edward Maelor thought this was a good salacious story about the powerful Trevor dynasty.

In 1628 Mersley Park was sold to the earl of Bridgwater together with part of the common wood and was disparked in the late seventeenth century. Although the park was to disappear from history from that date, its former existence is reflected in local place names such as Park Lane, Parkside, The Parks and Lodge Farm.

In addition, Berry’s article gives a good analysis of other relict features in the landscape of Holt such as medieval fishponds, roads, the castle and the street pattern of the village.

The full article is available to CSLH members. Please contact the Honorary Librarian on 01244 677360 to borrow this or other articles in our collection. A revised catalogue listing all articles available in the CSLH library will be released later this year.

Further Reading W.J. Britnell, Historic Landscape Characterisation: Maelor Saesneg – The Administration of the Landscape, CPAT Report 525 (Welshpool, 2003). J.G. Edwards, ‘The Normans and the ’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 42 (1956). T.P. Ellis, ‘The first extent of Bromfield and Yale AD 1315’, Cymmrodorian Record Series, 11 (London, 1924). B. Evans, ‘The medieval liberty of Wrexham’, Transactions of the Historical Society, 10 (1961). E.D. Evans, ‘The Crown Lordships of Denbighshire’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 50 (2000). M. Gelling, Signposts to the Past (Chichester, 1988). M. Gelling, ‘The early history of West Mercia’ in S. Basset, ed., The Origins of Anglo Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989).

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M. Gelling & H.D.G. Foxall, The Place-Names of Shropshire (part 2), English Place Name Society (2004). N.J. Higham, The Origins of Cheshire (Manchester, 1993). P.H. Humphries, of Edward I in Wales (London, 1983). R.J. Glanville Jones, ‘Some medieval rural settlements in North Wales’, Transactions and Papers of the Institute of British Geographers, 19 (1954). R.J. Glanville Jones, ‘The pattern of settlement on the Welsh Border’, Agricultural History Review, 8 (1960). R.J. Glanville Jones ‘The distribution of bond settlements in North West Wales’, Welsh History Review, 2 (1964). A.N. Palmer, The Town of Holt (London, 1910) reprinted by Bridge Books, (Wrexham 1991). A.N. Palmer, ‘A history of the old parish of Gresford in the counties of and Flint’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 6th Series, 5 (1905), pp. 195-198. A.N. Palmer, A History of the Thirteen Country Townships of Wrexham (Wrexham, 1903). A.N. Palmer & E. Pugh, A History of the Ancient Tenures of Land in North Wales and the Marches (2nd edition, Wrexham, 1910). T. Pennant, A Tour of North Wales, I (1778) reprinted by Bridge Books (Wrexham, 1991). D. Pratt, ‘Grant of office of Keeper of parks in Bromfield and Yale’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 24 (1975). D. Pratt, ‘The medieval borough of Holt’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 14 (1965). D. Pratt, ‘Fourteenth century Bromfield and Yale’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 27 (1978). D. Pratt, ‘Fourteenth century Wrexham’, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society, 55 (2007). I. Soulsby, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Chichester, 1983). D. Sylvester, The Rural Landscape of the Welsh Borderland: A Study in Historical Geography (London, 1969).

Ray Jones

Page 11 Greenfield Valley

Figure 1 The Greenfield Valley.

The landscape of the Greenfield valley is rich in industrial heritage that gives the valley its own particular attractiveness with scars and ruins from various aspects of its history. The valley landscape has been sculptured and moulded over the last two centuries by various industries, such as lead, copper, brass, cotton, wool, paper, coal mining and limestone quarrying, with their associated structures, tramways, railways and wharves.

Historically, the valley owes its origins to the Holy Well of St. Winefride’s, a fast running stream which turned the machinery of extensive mills and factories; the valley at one time a busy area employing hundreds of people inits industries. Today, the three lakes that run down the valley are more used to ducks and the sound of song birds than the noise of heavy industry and it is hard to imagine the area as ‘one of the pioneers’ of the industrial age.

By the seventh century St Winefride’s well was an important religious site. A church and chapel were founded on the edge of the stream. However,

Page 12

Greenfield’s oldest building is , founded in 1132 by Ranulph de Gernon, second earl of Chester. The building was erected close to the stream so the monks could harness the water power to grind corn, treat the wool from their sheep and erect fulling mills.

By the late sixteenth century early industrialists were using lead for smelting. However, it was another two hundred years before the Greenfield valley really came to prominence and was at the height of its prosperity. Greenfield Dock was a natural harbour. Raw copper was brought from Parys Mountain, Anglesey, where it was turned into various goods such as cups and pots. Many of the goods produced at Greenfield were linked to the eighteenth century Liverpool slave trade as they were taken to Liverpool before being exported to West Africa. The Liverpool merchants then transported slaves to the Caribbean, before carrying sugar, coffee, rum and cotton back to England. Part of the cotton shipment ultimately found its way to the cotton millsat Greenfield.

The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of great industrialisation in the valley. Many buildings were erected along the stream to drive machines that were being invented to increase production. These machines were turned by rotary motion from the water wheel. The water from St Winefride’s well, running from the surrounding limestone hills to the south, maintained a constant flow of 4,000 gallons per minute. The wide valley fertile plain provided substantial sites for manufacturing facilities, pools and reservoirs, while the relatively steep gradient ensured a powerful force of water to turn the waterwheels along the stream.

Greenfield and the town of Holywell grew substantially in the eighteenth century. Holywell became one of the first commercial towns in North Wales and the High Street still has many Georgian buildings. Between 1750 and 1800 Holywell had one of the fastest growing working-class population rates in the country. In 1774, Dr Samuel Johnson visited the town on his north-east Wales travels. He counted nineteen works in the valley. Holywell was the largest town in , with over 5,500 people living in the parish. According to a 1790 trade directory there was a post office, sixty shops, alongside twenty inns and beer houses.

Page 13 The ‘captains of industry’ lived on the outskirts of Holywell in elegant mansions with landscaped grounds and boundary walls protected by dense woodland and completed with gate lodges.

Figure 2 Lower Cotton Mill today. By the later eighteenth century, Greenfield valley had a line of manufacturing factories and workshops along the stream from St. Winefride’s Well to the wharf at Greenfield, comprising a corn mill, four cotton mills, two copper- rolling mills, a brass-making works, foundry, brass-battery mill, copper-wire mill, and a copper forge with a hammer mill.

When the first great cotton boom was beginning, two new mills, known as Upper and Lower Mills, were built in 1783 and 1785 respectively. Each of them was six storeys high, and it is characteristic of the time that the first (which had nearly 200 windows) was completed within six weeks. The smaller mills were three storeys high with a large water wheel. The workers often lived near their works in rows of houses, such as Battery Row and Tai Coed, built by the industrialists; others would travel from the surrounding villages.

The copper industry was one of the first to fall into decline due to wars with America and France and also to increasing competition from other parts of the country. The supplies of relatively cheap ore from Anglesey were becoming exhausted, and the changes in the Dee channel were making it more difficult

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for ships and barges to reach Greenfield wharf. The mills continued to use water power until steam engines were installed in the nineteenth century. From that time the manufacturing industry moved away from its small mills and workshops by the stream to larger buildings in the surrounding area. By the latter half of the nineteenth century most of the buildings in the valley were being abandoned.

The Chester to Holyhead Railway came to the area in 1848 and the Holywell branch line opened in 1869, but the valley never regained the prosperity of the 1700s. The railway did not promote anything resembling an economic revival, as had been forecast.

Figure 3 Water reservoir.

After the 1900s large areas of the industrial site were sold off andnew manufacturing industries, large and small, were making their appearance everywhere. During the tumultuous years between the two World Wars urbanised developments combined with housing estates and recreation facilities, encouraged by improved transport, made large scale impacts on the remaining rural landscape.

Greenfield Heritage Park At a public meeting in March 1985 an association known as Friends ofthe Greenfield Valley was formed with the specific aim of fostering greater interest

Page 15 in the valley to make this unique heritage available to the public. As a result, a large area of the lower valley was developed to form the Greenfield Valley Heritage Park. The country park covers seventy acres with landscaped grounds, woodlands, reservoirs, scheduled ancient monuments and industrial sites. The park contains a number of conserved mills and structures. The paper mill that once operated here has been reconstructed and the mill pools that used to provide power are open for recreational use. The old railway track is now covered by a newly planted broadleaved forest to form the new heritage park walkway. The park additionally contains a museum, farm and education facilities alongside a visitor centre.

Figure 4 Heritage Park walkway. References K. Davies, The eighteenth century copper and brass industries of the Greenfield valley’, Cymmrodorion Society Transactions (1979). A.H. Dodd, The Industrial Revolution in North Wales, (3rd ed., Cardiff, 1971). E.J. Foulkes, ‘The cotton-spinning factories of Flintshire, 1777-1866’ Flintshire Historical Society Journal, 21 (1964). P.S. Richards ‘The Holywell Textile Mills’, Flintshire Industrial Archaeology, 1 (1969). Greenfield Heritage Park Guide (On sale at the visitor centre). Automobile Association and Ordnance Survey Leisure Guide Snowdonia and North Wales, (1989). John Lowe

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Lifelong Learning

Being an inquisitive species, for most of us humans lifelong learning never stops. Fortunately neither does the pleasure of appreciation … finding out that bit more about why our surroundings look as they do and how things got that way.

This year there have been more chances to pick up new insights and techniques. In July CSLH held a Day school in Wales (by request, no less) and this is to be followed by a second 'Discovery Day' to be held in September in historic Nantwich.

What's in store for 2013? More is anticipated. It's all up to US as a Society. Have members any of their own bright ideas for future formats? If so, let us know!

The thinking is to pool our knowledge and skills – and basically enjoy doing just that. Landscape history rocks! Julie Smalley

Following a successful meeting between members of the North Wales Dendro Chronology Project/Dating Old Welsh Houses Group and members of CSLH, our Society was asked if it would run a day school about Landscape History to help members set their houses in context.

‘Learning Landscape History: A Day of Discovery’ was the end result - a packed day run by members of the CSLH planning team based in Cynwyd, near . To our surprise one participant was CSLH member Veronica Hay. Veronica has kindly written the following summary of the day ...

Page 17 A Day of Discovery

This was a most enjoyable and informative day. We were delighted to have Sharon and Mike (Headon) give us an introduction to considering more widely the settings of our Old Welsh Houses, putting them in context geographically and historically, on a wider scale than is afforded by only looking at the houses themselves.

Figure 1 Pont Dyfrdwy, River Dee.

Cynwyd is an ideal setting for an introduction to Landscape History as it is a small village situated on an ancient routeway and upstream from the confluence of the Afon Dyfrwdwy and the Afon Alwen. Cynwyd used to be the County of Merioneth but is now in Denbighshire. The nucleus of the village has a shop and cottages, plus a couple of inns, now listed buildings, which would have been much used by travellers, as well as by people attending at the adjacent market place, now called the Square.

Page 18 First of all, Sharon and Mike gave us a well-illustrated talk about landforms, land-use and route-ways and mentioned how the location, function and building materials give a house or any building its character. We then took an exploratory walk through the village to identify for ourselves the Afon Trystion, the older buildings, bridges, church and three chapels.

Mike and Sharon’s recommended route for exploration took us over an ancient bridge that was the old way of crossing the village stream before the newer bridge, that now carries modern traffic, was built a few yards downstream. An old woollen mill is now a scout hostel and the remains of Figure 2 Minafon Woollen Mill. a pandy could be found under the newer bridge.

Figure 3 The heart of Cynwyd.

Page 19 After lunch we looked at copies of eighteenth century estate maps andOS maps so that we could see how they help to locate a house and appreciate why it is situated where it is. Such information gives evidence of continuity and records changes in the landscape but it is important to compare evidence from more than one source or document to establish accuracy.

Figure 4 Bethania Chapel.

Finally we took a walk out from the village to see for ourselves the relationship between the village and the position it occupies in relation to the Afon Dyfrwdwy and Afon Alwen and the roads that are now present.

It was a really good and useful day and the members of the Dating Old Welsh Houses expressed their thanks and appreciation to Sharon and Mike.

Veronica Hay

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Field Visit Reports

We made five visits in 2012 and, although not quite a camel, we managed to get a fair-sized ferret through the eye of a needle in arranging for good weather to attend us each time. In a season peppered with rainstorms, we marched serenely on, warm and dry, visiting the Bela estuary, the Sychnant Pass, weapons plant, with Whittington Castle and, finally, Wats Dyke near . Members’ reports are below. Our sincere thanks go to all who helped in leading or suggesting these visits and also to everyone who took part – the humour, companionship and knowledge of members are what make these visits so enjoyable. Please continue to make suggestions for future visits.

In fact, the Society is asking for more help next year because I am due to have a knee operation next spring and will be unable to manage the visits. The 2013 programme is well in hand with dates fixed and visits planned for: Chester (the Civil War landscape), Farndon and Holt, Great Orme Country Park and Greenfield Valley.

For 2013 we are asking members to volunteer to take on the preliminary administration that I shall be unable to do and the organisation on the day itself. If you feel you can help please get in touch with myself or Sharon.

Mike Taylor

The Kent Bela Estuary (28th April)

Our visit began in the small south Cumbrian village of Beetham, lying beside the River Bela. The latter is fed from the sizeable hills to the north east which supplied plentiful water all year round to feed the two water mills that existed on opposite banks at one time.

Page 21 Our first stop was at the parish church (cover photo). From at least Saxon times a place of worship has stood where St Michael and All Angels church is situated today. The earliest work in evidence today dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, coins dating from the early eleventh century were found buried in the church near the foundations of an earlier building. In the late 1800s the church served a large parish that included Arnside, Witherslack, Meathop and Ulpha, the three latter being across the Kent estuary, connected by a crossing over the sands. Like many such churches, Victorian restoration is apparent.

We then walked on to visit the Heron Mill which is a traditional working mill on the River Bela and were shown round by the jovial guide and trainee miller. The present building, dated 1750, was restored in the 1970s after closing in the 1950s. A mill existed on the site as early as 1096. The canons of Conishead Priory were granted the right to construct a new mill on the site in 1230. A nearby waterfall caused by a naturally occurring ledge of rock on the river provided a means to drive the mill's high breast-shot water wheel, 14 feet in diameter. The water wheel provides sufficient power to drive four pairs of grinding stones mounted on a frame above the floor level. It is probable that the mill produced mainly oat meal, since the Figure 1 Heron Mill, Beetham. climate would not have been good enough to grow wheat.

During 2009-10 Heron Corn Mill installed a 100kW Kaplan propeller-type hydropower turbine to provide green energy for the entire complex. The new turbine building is located to the right of the fall.

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We travelled on to Milnthorpe, which is best known as Westmorland’s only seaport. Until 1800 vessels could get close to the town by sailing up the Bela, but changes to the channel and banks, followed by the building of the Arnside railway viaduct in 1857 lead to its demise as a port. However, the town still contains some of the original merchants’ houses.

Our leader, Tony, then took us on to the marshes near Milnthorpe Bridge. This area was well known to him since he had grown up here and swum in the river. He explained how the landscape had changed significantly over the last two hundred years beginning with the Enclosure Act of 1803. Prior to this the vast areas of salt marsh and mudflats were subject to regular seasonal inundation at high tide. A glance at the OS map shows that this area extended up into the Lyth valley to Underbarrow, with ‘moss’ being a frequent description. The Act caused enclosure of 6000 acres, 400 acres being on the Milnthorpe side. To protect this area a 2.5 mile sea bank was built with tidal sluice gates. To drain the reclaimed land a drain or ‘dyke’ was dug and the 2 mile Marsh Road, some 21 feet wide to service the area. The sea bank suffered many breaches over the years due to high tides, westerly gales and heavy rain over the hills, assisted by rabbit burrows weakening the structure.

We then moved on to have our picnic lunch on the Carboniferous limestone outcrop that forms the hills between Beetham and Arnside. It is characterised by crags and areas of limestone pavement interlaced with clints and grikes. We lunched sitting on the clints, with our feet in the wider grikes. A number of specialised plants grow in the grikes. Figure 2 Limestone Pavement.

Page 23 After lunch we walked to the top of Haverbrack Bank passing an old iron bloomery on the way and admiring some early purple orchids. From the top (110 metres) we could see the River Kent coming down from Levens winding its way between sand banks on the far side from us. However, the course of Figure 3 Kent and Bela Estuaries. the river has changed. During the 1970s the river flowed closer to Fishcarling point (where we had been in the morning). However, today this area is grazed by cattle.

Proceeding on to Arnside via Storth we had close up views of the viaduct that carries the Carnforth to Barrow-in-Furness railway line, its scale being shown by the two coach diesel that obligingly appeared. Figure 4 Carnfoth to Barrow Viaduct.

Thus ended an excellent visit with tea in the local café. Thanks to Tony for a well documented and interesting visit with plenty of personal memories.

David George

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Pensychnant (12th May)

It started as any Landscape History trip should - along an obscure road from Conway, over the moors, which had once been the main highway from London to Dublin before the Welsh coast road had been blasted through the ocean cliffs to create the old A55, now the dual carriageway. The obscure road was the Sychnant Pass. It led to Pensychnant House and Estate, where we spent the morning.

The house had been a holiday home for an eminent and prosperous Lancashire architect who had designed many of the Lancashire cotton mills in Victorian times. The architect was Abraham Stott. His companies, A.H. Stott andSons, and their successors, designed fifty-nine of the 161 cotton spinning mills in Oldham. When Abraham died, the house and estate passed through several hands but it was eventually re-possessed by a member of the Stott family who created a trust which now owns it and has created a conservation centre and nature reserve, open to the public.

Figure 1 Pensychnant House.

Our guide was Julian Thompson. After showing us the house he took us on a nature trail around the estate. The trail had been 'civilised' in Victorian times, with a tennis court, a picnic ground, rustic paths lined with volcanic rocks, and

Page 25 even a granite rock on which Edward I had reputedly sat. There were also splendid views of ancient woodland, Victorian plantations, and rhododendron invasions. We saw lots of wild plants, the bluebells were out, and there were still a few fungi. We heard, the lucky ones saw, a redstart, and some heard their first cuckoo of the year.

The grounds are home to several unusual species, including two rare moths, a rare fungus, and a pied flycatcher. One has to wonder whether this really is an unusual habitat, or whether the sightings reflect merely the expertise of its many visitors.

Stott's architectural work is recorded in a well-produced book*. For those with internet access, Wikipedia provides a fascinating account of Stott's life and works. His eccentric mill designs were echoed in his holiday home which anticipated the Arts and Crafts movement by fifty years. We envied our guide who lives in the house, in spite of the inefficient (but remarkably early) central heating system, and an exterior power house which once provided electric light.

* R.N. Holden, Stott and Sons: Architects of the Lancashire Cotton Mill, (Lancaster,1998). ISBN 1-85936-047-5. Members are welcome to borrow our own copy of this publication.

Alan Comyns

Pensychnant House originated as a typical Welsh farmhouse with living accommodation to one side, with a central corridor from front to back, and the through draught used for winnowing corn. On the other side of the corridor there was an animal shelter. There is evidence that the farmer was not particularly poor, since the house had a substantial stone chimney.

The Victorian Gothic house we see today, which looks as though it has stepped out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, was a holiday ‘cottage’ of the Stott family, wealthy architects of numerous cotton mills in Lancashire. They purchased the property, along with the land, some of which they transformed into a woodland

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garden, filled with specimen trees and shrubs.

In 1989, Brian Henthorn Stott set up a Foundation Trust to protect the history and natural beauty of the area, working with local naturalists and national wildlife organisations.

During the morning we were shown around the public rooms of the house and then taken on a tour of the woodland garden by Julian Thompson, who manages the Estate and lives in the house with his family. He pointed out a stone, carved in the shape of a chair and overlooking the park. It was said to be favoured by Edward I as an ideal spot to view the sport of hunting, but is more likely to be a Victorian folly. The profusion of wood anemones are a possible indication of the wood’s ancient origins.

After lunch, Julian took us on a walk to view the remnants of an ancient past, beginning with medieval platform houses. The oblong foundations of the walls, which it is believed would have been no more than 2 feet high can still be seen, set into the hillside. The houses had neither windows or chimneys and the occupants ‘belonged’ to the Bishop, a practice which only stopped during the time of the great plague when a shortage of labour gave common folk more power.

Figure 2 Medieval House Platforms.

Page 27 Next came into view the ‘Fairy Glen’, a tourist attraction until the 1950s, with its public house and tearoom providing refreshments. Popular rumour has it that the enterprising owner of the tearooms trained her donkey to bring shopping up from the village unaccompanied! Our path then took us through the middle of an Iron Age house and perched on the skyline was a huge erratic. Julian then pointed out evidence for an abandoned village. Ridge and furrow farming practice was still visible on an isolated triangle of land given bythe Black Prince to the parish of Conwy.

Figure 3 Valley of the Huts (DMV).

Our afternoon walk had led us along a Bronze Age path and it is worth noting that before the A55 was built, the Sychnant pass was the stage coach route to Ireland. Turning for home, we passed the remains of a stone circle by a temple/market place. Clearly ancient people had shared our enthusiasm for the fantastic views stretching before us.

Harry Bradley & Katy Percival

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Rhydymwyn (10th June)

Twenty six members of the Landscape History Society, in association with the Rhydymwyn Valley History Society, visited the Rhydymwyn Valley site on a fine Sunday afternoon in Jubilee June. Diane Johnson, one of our members, who lives in the village nearby, had taken some of us there six years ago and we now saw some of the changes that had since been made. We had a lecture on the history of gas warfare by Colin Barbour, Chairman of the Rhydymwyn Valley History Society, watched an archive film actually shot in the chemical works, which had recently been discovered in Porton Down, and then went on conducted walks.

Rhydymwyn is a small village, only three miles from the centre of Mold, which had been chosen at the start of the Second World War as the site of an ICI factory for making and storing mustard gas and filling shells with it. The site was chosen because it is ideally situated for top-secret, hazardous work. It is self-contained, isolated, has both river () and ground water, yet is within fairly easy reach of its workforce and a railway. At its peak in 1942, over 2,000 men and women worked there. Fearful of bombing attacks, the army built a decoy on Mountain near , now visible in crop marks in aerial photographs, but the bombers never came. Figure 1 Change Room.

In addition to being used for poison gas work, the site was chosen for some of the early British work on the atom bomb. In one of the large original chemical manufacturing buildings, now a Listed Building, MetroVick did some of their

Page 29 work on a gaseous diffusion process for separating uranium isotopes. This work was soon transferred to the USA and eventually returned to Capenhurst, but Rhydymwyn was its birthplace.

Figure 2 1940s Graffiti.

When ICI left in the early 1950s the site was locked up and abandoned, and nature took over. Trees grew in the empty buildings, bats colonised some of them, and a profusion of plants and animals prospered. Then, in the 1990s, local residents managed to have the site partially opened for selected visitors and for research. A visitor centre was built at the entrance and educational programmes started. There are no guidebooks or history books, and no museum artefacts, but there is a new, well-designed website (www.rhydymwynvalleyhistory.co.uk).

From the start of the sites reopening, there have been two communities working at Rhydymwyn – naturalists and military historians – both employees and volunteers. We sensed that there was and still is an uneasy partnership between these two communities. There can never be unrestricted access to the site because it contains so many potentially contaminated areas.

This was a thought-provoking, nostalgic visit and we are grateful to Diane and her colleagues for making it possible. Alan Comyns

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Oswestry and Whittington Castle (24th June)

The President’s Visit on 24th June was to the town of Oswestry, the nearby Old Oswestry racecourse and Whittington Castle. Around thirty members took part, and considering it was the middle of June, the weather was kind – it didn’t rain. Although we started under cloudy skies at the foot of the castle in Oswestry, as the day wore on the clouds broke up and by the afternoon we had some quite pleasant sunshine.

Oswestry is, or has been, a border town, a market town, a coaching town and a railway town, as well as the birth place of Wilfred Owen and the home of the young Alan Ball. Wilfred Owen is commemorated by a plaque near St Oswald’s church and rather unimaginatively, two suburban streets: Wilfred Owen Road and Wilfred Owen Avenue, but nothing is evident marking Alan Ball’s early years here.

Whilst the town’s roles over time may not be in doubt, the origins of its name are, but the popular and most widely held explanation is that it is a corruption of ‘Oswald’s Tree’; Oswald being the Christian king of Northumbria who was killed in battle by the pagan king Penda who then had Oswald’s dismembered body nailed to a tree. And who could doubt the veracity of this explanation when nearby Oswald’s Well marks the spot where the tree stood?

We started at the motte-and-bailey castle in the town, referred to in Domesday Book as Luvre and interpreted as Norman French for ‘the work’. From the castle there was a view over to a much earlier fortification – Old Oswestry hill fort, built in phases over the first millennium BC and more latterly used by the army during the First World War as a training area resulting in damage to the archaeology of the site. (A reminder of the Royal Artillery’s presence at the nearby Park Hall Camp can be seen in the form of a 25 pounder field gun in the Cae Glas memorial gardens just off Church Street). The extensive and imposing buildings of the Cambrian Railway Company could also been seen, Oswestry being the headquarters of the company, which became part of the Great Western Railway in 1922.

Page 31 From the castle we walked down to Bailey Head, a market square pleasantly delineated on three sides by the nineteenth century Guildhall and coaching inns and then ruined on the fourth by side by a terrible 1960s block which replaced the nineteenth century market hall. From there we went down Bailey Street and Church Street crossing as we did the town wall (no longer in existence) to reach St Oswald’s church. Oswestry was on the coaching route to Holyhead and the number of coaching inns along these streets bore witness to this, including the Wynnstay Hotel where balls were held during the races in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is open to speculation whether the atmosphere at these was more Jane Austin or Pickwick Papers.

Figure 1 Old Grammar School, Oswestry.

Before leaving Oswestry, note should be made of the building which perhaps was of most interest to members: a small building on the English Walls. It was of little architectural or historical interest and cost twenty pence to getin. That’s inflation for you.

From Oswestry we followed the route taken by the rowdy citizens of the town, a mile up the hill to the site of Oswestry racecourse. Racing began sometime in the eighteenth century, the course having been built on the town’s common land, with turf subsequently re-laid by French prisoners from the Napoleonic wars who had been granted parole status and were able to walk freely around

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the town. Part of the small grandstand can still be seen. A combination of spectator behaviour, which was thought to be too rowdy by those in positions to make such judgements, and the introduction of the railway which enabled horses and spectators to travel to larger courses further away, saw the last meeting being held in 1848. It is an interesting footnote (or should that be hoof note) that prior to this, race horses had to walk to courses and so only raced at courses near enough to reach in a reasonable time without exhausting themselves. Offa’s Dyke long distance path now runs across part of the course, although the Dyke itself is a short distance away.

And so finally to Whittington Castle, a fortified site which developed froma motte-and-bailey to a thirteenth century stone castle. The site has seen subsequent tinkering through to Victorian times and there is now speculation about the extent to which the castle was built as a fortification or whether it was designed to impress and impose. Current thinking is that what was thought to be a second motte was in fact a mound to view a medieval garden located on what is now the overspill car park for visitors to the castle grounds. And as if to illustrate continuity, in this case the English obsession with gardens and plants, a plant fair was being held in the castle grounds that afternoon.

Figure 2 Whittington Castle. At Whittington we were joined by two young lads who were visiting the castle with their family. Intrigued by what they heard by eavesdropping, they tagged

Page 33 on to the group and at the end of the visit one of them was in debate with the President about the castle. I heard William the Conqueror’s name mentioned, and the President saying ‘Ah, but how do you know ...’ Perhaps as a result of that chance encounter, there is another landscape historian in the making.

As ever, our thanks go to Graeme for leading both an informative and entertaining visit.

Peter Richards

Wat’s Dyke, Northop (7th July)

The weather was kind to us as we met up at the car park in the centre of Northop. Pete Lewis was our guide and as the author of Wat’s Dyke Way Heritage Trail; he was a very knowledgeable leader. We left the village to walk across the adjacent golf course and then, passing the gates of the home of Michael Owen (Lower Soughton Hall) and the fields where his horses grazed, we proceeded up a narrow tree lined track complete with a rushing brook at its side giving views of the rear of Soughton Hall (now a country house hotel but once the home of William John Bankes, the politician).

We then turned into a hard surfaced, narrow road. This was where we had our first sighting of Wat’s Dyke, or so Pete told us. To the inexperienced eye it was just another length of hedgerow and there did not seem to be any truly distinctive features other than it being part of a raised bank. This Figure 1 Aptly named!

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road lead into a newly developed housing estate where again there was little evidence of the early history of the area other than the token acknowledgement given by ‘Wat’s Dyke Way’.

Once we got on to the verge of the main road, we sat on a low stone wall and were amazed to be told the dyke was actually part of what seemed to be a grassed-over drainage ditch, nothing more than a hollow lying at right angles to the road. On crossing the road, the farm opposite proudly announced itself as being Offa’s Dyke Farm so it was not just us that found Wat to be an elusive character. After a short time we found ourselves on a steeply banked hillside, more of Wat’s Dyke. Here use had been made of the natural contours to the land to provide a barrier. Apparently the base of the ditch cut in the hillside contained ankle breakers to prevent access by invaders. However, it was difficult to separate the natural features of the landscape from those adapted to a defensive or territorial marking role. Without Pete’s knowledge I am sure few of us could have made the distinction.

We returned to Northop by way of its back lanes. Many eighteenth and nineteenth century properties remain. The most notable being the National School (closed in 1974), Plymouth House (built in 1673) and the Boot Public House (probably predating 1717). We came away privileged to have been shown a very hidden Figure 2 Follow my leader! landscape.

Ann Daley (photos by David Kennils)

Page 35 Publications

Hot Off The Press—Released 6th September

Through skilful use of historical documents and context, Graeme White brings together the people and monuments of medieval England. Through this 500 year period of dramatic social, religious, political and military change, the narrative allows the reader to understand impact of new philosophies and pragmatic responses to circumstance on the physical fabric of the landscape of the day. This book is essential reading for historians and archaeologists alike.

Stewart Ainsworth, Senior Investigator, English Heritage

This book, which will appeal to both students and scholars alike, fills a gap in the subject dealing as it does with the full range of structures to be found in the medieval countryside. It reveals the complexity and diversity of England’s farming landscapes, urban settlements and religious and defensive buildings. It provides an up-to-date and lively discussion of the development of the medieval landscape from the pre-Conquest period to the Reformation and will swiftly become a standard text for those interested in the subject.

Dr Robert Liddiard, Senior Lecturer, University of East Anglia, UK

© Chester Society for Landscape History, 2012

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