Cefn Mawr and District: Understanding Urban Character
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Cefn Mawr and District: Understanding Urban Character Cadw Welsh Government Plas Carew Unit 5/7 Cefn Coed Parc Nantgarw Cardiff CF15 7QQ Telephone: 01443 33 6000 Fax: 01443 33 6001 First published by Cadw in 2014 Print ISBN 978 1 85760 312 5 Digital ISBN 978 1 85760 314 9 © Crown Copyright 2014 WG19215 Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales. Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales. Cadw Welsh Government Plas Carew Unit 5/7 Cefn Coed Parc Nantgarw Cardiff CF15 7QQ Cefn Mawr and District: Understanding Urban Character 1 Acknowledgements As part of this study, historical research and mapping was carried out by Govannon consultancy (Dr David Gwyn) under contract to Cadw. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales provided the photography. 2 Contents Introduction 5 Settlement and Building 35 Aims of the Study 5 The Character of Settlement 35 Building Traditions 40 Natural Topography and Geology 6 Character Areas 48 Historical Background 8 1. Cefn Mawr 48 Industry 11 2. The Flexsys Site 55 Iron 11 3. Rhosymedre 56 Sandstone 13 4. Cefn Bychan, Newbridge and Dolydd 60 Limestone Quarrying and Burning 15 5. Froncysyllte 63 Coal Mining 16 6. Trevor and Tref y Nant 65 Clay 18 7. Acrefair 67 The Chemical Industry 21 8. Plas Madoc 69 Transport 23 Turnpikes and Laneways 23 Statement of Significance 70 Waterways 26 Railways 29 Selected Sources 71 Early Railways and Mineral Lines 29 Locomotive Railways 30 Endnotes 74 Historical Topography 32 Appendix 77 Desk-based Assessment of the Archaeological Potential of the Flexsys Site List of Maps pages 87–101 1. Historical Land Use 8. Cefn Mawr (1) 2. Chronology of Settlement 9. The Flexsys Site (2) 3. Transport Routes 10. Rhosymedre (3) 4. Railways 11. Cefn Bychan, Newbridge and Dolydd (4) 5. The Flexsys Site 12. Froncysyllte (5) 6. All Character Areas 13. Trevor and Tref y Nant (6) 7. All Character Areas with Historic Environment 14. Acrefair (7) Designations 15. Plas Madoc (8) 3 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER 4 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Introduction Aims of the Study themes and processes which have shaped the town. Urban characterization aims to describe and The immediate purpose of this study is to inform explain the historic character of towns to give planning policy and regeneration initiatives in a focus to local distinctiveness and serve as a the environs of the World Heritage site of tool for the sustainable management of the Pontcysyllte, and to encourage a closer integration historic environment. It seeks to inform and between the World Heritage site and the support positive conservation and regeneration settlements associated with it. By helping to programmes, help improve the quality of planning define the special character of the settlements advice, and contribute to local interpretation and in the district, it also offers a common platform education strategies. for all policies and programmes that contribute to sustaining local distinctiveness. Urban characterization defines the distinctive historical character of individual towns, and The Cefn Mawr and District: Understanding Urban identifies the variety of character within them, Character study was adopted as Supplementary recognizing that this character is fundamental to Planning Guidance in September 2012 after a local distinctiveness and pride of place, and is an period of public consultation. This document should Pontcysyllte Aqueduct asset in regeneration. It looks at how the history be read in conjunction with the Wrexham Unitary and Canal: a World Heritage site and a major of a town is expressed in its plan and topography, Development Plan (2005), the emerging Local asset for Cefn Mawr in areas of archaeological potential, and in its Development Plan and the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and its district architectural character. The survey is not just and Canal World Heritage Site Supplementary (Crown Copyright: an audit of features, but a reconstruction of the Planning Guidance Note (2012). RCAHMW). 5 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Natural Topography and Geology The study area is located at the point where ridge that defines this valley to the south is a the east-flowing river Dee leaves the broad but limestone formation. On the north side of the river, high-sided valley it has occupied from its source, the angle of slope eases around Trevor, only to and flows into the flat lands of the Cheshire– be disrupted by a sandstone intrusion forming the Shropshire plain. The easternmost extent of the Cefn Mawr and Cefn Bychan ridge to the east. Cefn Mawr, dramatically sited on a ridge to the north of the river Dee (Crown Copyright: RCAHMW). Cefn Bychan, at the end of the northern ridge (Crown Copyright: RCAHMW). 6 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER The southern ridge, which ends at Pen y Graig in sequence below the sandstone, but still near above the village of Froncysyllte, is made of the surface or outcropping. This concentration limestone, which was profitably quarried from of accessible and valuable natural resources the late eighteenth to the twentieth century. was the key to the industrial development Froncysyllte, on the steep To the north, Cefn Mawr is made up largely of the area, which in turn profoundly slopes of the southern of quartzose sandstone, interspersed with thin influenced the distinctive form and appearance ridge (Crown Copyright: seams of gritstone, ironstone, coal and clay, of its settlements. RCAHMW). 7 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Historical Background Pontcysyllte Aqueduct The character of Cefn Mawr and the settlements The extensive natural resources that were towers above the old around it reflects an industrial history based on exploited during the nineteenth century had been bridge over the Dee exploitation of the abundant natural resources of in this depiction by known about in earlier periods and small-scale John Warwick Smith the area. It is intimately linked to developments workings may long have been characteristic of (The National Library in transport and in particular to the construction the economy of the area, perhaps influencing of Wales). of the Llangollen Canal, which crossed the Dee the shape of early settlement as scattered to reach Trevor on the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct smallholdings in a mesh of tracks and lanes. in 1805. These developments took place in the But it was investment in an industrial transport context of land use that was originally agricultural. system — first the canal and then railways — There is still abundant evidence of agriculture that enabled more sustained growth in this area around the edge of the study area and on the and supported the development of capitalized valley floor, where ‘the Dee Valley broadens into industries as well as the modern settlement green hedge-bordered water-meadows showing pattern. an industrial smudge only on the further side’,1 also in farms such as Ty Mawr, Cefn Bychan, This pattern is characteristically informal, and Dolydd to the north, Argoed and Ty Isa suggesting an almost casual and certainly scarcely to the south. Industry, however, has been the controlled process. This was not a marginal area dominant force in determining the present however: from the eighteenth century at least, character of this landscape. it was an integral part of the holdings of several 8 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Informal settlement patterns at Froncysyllte (Crown Copyright: RCAHMW). A distinctive plot of land at Froncysyllte, with buildings along its boundary (Crown Copyright: RCAHMW). estates and there was considerable activity in part of the area. Originally the property of the buying and selling land in the eighteenth and Lloyd family, this estate came by marriage to nineteenth centuries, partly in response to the John Rowland (died 1803), and was later in the commercial opportunities presented by the possession of the Youde family until 1856. Lesser exploitation of mineral wealth. landowners included Sarah Jones, a widow, at Acrefair at the time of the tithe schedule The Wynnstay estate was the major landowner, in 1844. The Owen family, descended from the and the boundary of its park marks an abrupt Kynastons, owned the Plas Kynaston estate until change in the character of the landscape to it was acquired by Wynnstay in 1813. the east — industrial activity and settlement were largely excluded from its confines. Lands Plas Kynaston was an eighteenth-century house of to the south of the Dee and a portion to the some sophistication and, although the estate was north belonged to the Chirk estate, whilst the probably of agricultural origin, its owner had been Plas Madoc estate included much of the northern involved in coal mining on its land in the early 9 CEFN MAWR AND DISTRICT: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER eighteenth century. The house itself was leased on its land in the nineteenth century. Elsewhere, to Exuperius Pickering and later to T.E. Ward, landowners seem to have been content to allow both of them entrepreneurs with interests in others to undertake development, benefiting from local mines and quarries. Pickering built the the enhanced rents this brought in. The British Iron Kynaston branch of the canal from Trevor basin Company, and its successor the New British Iron during the 1820s. Company, became a significant local landowner in its own right, owning land in the vicinity of the Some of these land owners were directly involved works at the time of the tithe schedule of 1845, in the exploitation of resources on their land — including lands in Acrefair where brick and tile Plas Kynaston for example, there was an ironworks at Plas Madoc works were later developed.