Category Archives: Walks suitable for unwilling legs

Medieval ambition and Civil War musket ball holes at the Church of St Chad’s in Holt (Grade 1 listed)

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Introduction

Either side of the River Dee, and linked by the lovely late medieval red sandstone bridge, are the villages of Holt on the Welsh side and Farndon on the English side, each with its own substantial red sandstone church, both of which are dedicated to St Chad and both of which have well-populated churchyards.  Each has its own very particular character and personality, and as well as being the centres of Christian devotion and burial, seamlessly blending life and death, both have Civil War stories and scars and both continue to function as places of worship today.  This post is about the Grade-1 listed St Chad’s in Holt.

Map showing the location of Mercia and the line of the Anglo-Welsh border. Source: Wikipedia

The church is located at the top of the slope that runs down to the river crossing, precisely where Bridge Street meets Church Street, opposite the small rectangular green.  An attractive wrought iron gateway is set between a house on one side and the Peal O’ Bells pub on the other, and opens onto a path flanked by red sandstone garden walls leading to the church and churchyard.  The church is light-filled with a peaceful atmosphere and some notable features, some of them very unusual. The overall effect of St Chad’s is welcoming and combines a sense of heritage with contemporary relevance.  For details about visiting, see Visiting Details at the end.

According to Bede (in the 8th century) St Chad, who died in AD 672, was a leading light in the Anglo-Saxon church, rising through the ecclesiastical ranks in the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia and under King Wulfhere, one of the earliest Christian kings, became the first Bishop of Lichfield in the new diocese of Lichfield, at the heart of Mercia.  Mercia was one of seven British kingdoms of 7th century Britain and occupied most of central England, with much of the border with Wales, always a movable feast, somewhat further to the west.  Regarded as a pioneer who helped to spread Christianity in and beyond Mercia, he became popular during the Middle Ages in the Midlands and its borders.

The following details are just the edited highlights. For a more technical architectural description see the Wrexham Churches Survey (see Sources at the end).  The church very much rewards a visit.
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Exterior

South side of St Chad’s Church, Holt

The church is approached through a pair of wrought iron gates that were made in 1816 and replaced the former lychgate.  As you approach the church and walk around to find the carvings around the south door, you will notice a change underfoot because in the immediate vicinity of the church the path is composed of horizontal ledger grave stones and vertical headstones laid flat (distinguished by chisel marks at the bases, which would have been underground), all forming huge paving slabs, some from the 18th century.

Path made up of grave markers

The exterior of the church is built of local red sandstone, the older parts badly eroded on the exterior, probably as a result of traffic pollution.  Sandstone, being soft, lends itself to graffiti and there is quite a lot of it dotted around the building, dating from the 18th century.  The roof of the rectangular nave and chancel is made of copper, which accounts for its green colour.  Copper was more expensive than the more usual lead, and is both fire resistant and more enduring, as well as a gesture of status.

A curious feature of the church and its roof-level features is the presence of crocketed pinnacles, each with twin gargoyles on the north sides and the absence of them on the south side.  I only noticed because I love gargoyles and go looking for them.  This is due to the removal of the pinnacles on the south side during 1732, one of the periods of redesign and alteration.

North side of the church, showing four pinnacles, each of which is adorned with small gargoyles. Photograph taken from the west, just next to the tower.

The tower features four gargoyles on the corners at the very top of the tower, and a string-course just below that level marked by floral ornamental motifs and small grotesques, very similar to the sculpted string-course that you can see here at Gresford All Saints’.  The 18th century bells are referred to below.  The top of the tower has gargoyles at its corners and the roof of the tower appears to be leaded.

The string course of grotesques, flowers and other motifs near the top of the tower.

 

A circuit of the exterior reveals that there are three doorways.  The studded west door, through which visitors enter today, is impressively large, but has no notable features.

The earliest entrance is the south door, with some lovely, albeit very eroded ornamental carvings. This would have been the main access from the castle, which is why it was so ornate.  As well as decorative motifs, there is a central panel showing the Annunciation set over the top of the arch and carvings in the spandrels (the three-sided sections between the arch and the square frame).  The spandrel on the right as you face the door shows the arms of Henry VII, together with a figure wearing a mitre; the other side is very worn. Above the door and its surround is a carved band of small quatrefoil motifs, each arranged in patterns of four. xxx

The door that opens into the north aisle of the church (round to the left of the tower as you face it) has nice carved details in the spandrels between the arch and the square frame.  Most fascinatingly, it has a line of three holes in it plugged with wooden stoppers.  These holes are called loopholes and were used for firing muskets from inside, much like arrow-slits in medieval castles.

The north entrance with the “loop holes.”

At the east end, under the central window, is an unusual little memorial built into the wall to Jasper Peck Esq and his wife Amy, died 1712 and 1740 respectively, the latter the daughter of Sir Kenrick Eyton.

At the east end of the church, built into the external wall beneath the central window, is an 18th century memorial

A memorial in the churchyard of St Chad’s, Holt

The churchyard contains plenty of grave stones and memorials.  The earliest, now moved for its protection inside the church (about which more below) dates to either the late 17th or early 18th century.  Although there are many from the 18th century, the majority of graves and their memorials date to the 19th century, with a range of fairly typical shapes and symbols.  Most of the memorials accompanying the graves are headstones, but earlier chest-style memorials and ledgers (inscribed horizontal slabs) are also represented, together with more obviously monumental types.  The cemetery was later extended east, possibly in an effort to avoid the north side of the church, which only has one gravestone, and even that is at the far east end.  The north side of a churchyard, in the shadow of the church, was often reserved either for burials that had to be buried in unconsecrated ground, such as suicides or babies who had died before baptism, but might also contain pauper and unmarked graves.  The monument known as the Roman Pillar, shown further down the page, may or may not have originally been a Roman column from the nearby tileworks, but in the churchyard performed the role of a sundial, now without a dial, with an octagonal top with the engraving TP WR CW 1766.

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Interior

The plan of St Chad’s is simple, with the tower at the west end, and the chancel (where the high altar is located) at the east end as usual.  The nave, where the congregation sits, is flanked by two aisles.  The chancel is flanked by two chapels for private prayer.

The roof looks as though it belongs to the Perpendicular period, but is belongs to the restoration of 1871-3

Heading through the impressive main door, set into the base of the tower, and through the glass-panelled doors into the nave, you are immediately presented with an uninterrupted view down the full length of the tall nave towards the east end.  The multiple large windows, only one of which has stained glass (dating to the early 1900s), provide the interior with a lot of natural light, even in the absence of clerestories. The arcades are made of a fine yellow sandstone, much better than red sandstone for creating a light space, and much more refined in appearance. The warm, light reddish wood of the relatively modern pews helps to add to avoid any sense of dourness.  The walls lack the usual distracting and overblown clutter of highly ornamental wall memorials.  Looking up, the wooden ceiling looks as though it belongs to the Perpendicular period, but is belongs to the restoration of 1871-3.

Inevitably there is a bank of 1910 organ pipes blocking the south aisle, shutting out light and preventing direct access from the north aisle to the north chapel, but this is entirely typical, echoing the same scheme in both Gresford and Malpas churches, amongst many others.  Similarly, the south aisle is truncated at the western end of the aisle by a small room presumably used as a vestry.

The 13th and 14th Centuries

Holt Castle by Peter Mazell in 1779. Source: Castle Studies Trust

There is no evidence of a church prior to the 13th century.  The village of Holt was built in the early 1280s, probably as a bastide by John de Warenne, the 7th Earl of Surrey under a charter from Edward I.  A bastide was a newly laid out pioneer town built around a castle on the edge of potentially hostile territory.  Edward I imported the idea imported from Gascony where he had founded a number of new defended towns, and used it as a model for Flint Castle and its bastide town, as well as subsequent castles in his circle of defences in north Wales.  Defensive walls may have been planned for the town but were never built.  The foundations of the first church were probably included in the plan for the border colony, along with a former marketplace (where the village square is located today).

The earliest remaining components of the present church belong to the 13th -14th century.  The nave arcades (arches that divide the nave from the aisles) feature five bays of lancet-shaped pointed arches that date to this period and indicate either that the original church of c.1280 was aisled, or that aisles were a later 14th century addition.  The aisles were widened in the 15th century, removing the older aisle outer walls, but the original ones almost certainly featured lancet-shaped windows of the earlier gothic “Decorated” style.

The earliest of the aisle arches are pointed (or lancet) shaped, unlike the later Perpendicular arches that flank the chancel.

An attractive 14th century “credence table,” looking like a small shrine, was built into the south wall of the Lady Chapel at the east end of the south aisle, moved into this position in Sir William Stanley’s alterations in the late 15th century.  This was used for accessories used to celebrate Holy Mass.  The underside, completely hidden when looking down onto the small platform, has a marvellous grotesque face flanked by two faces, one human and one animal, looking very like a misericord.  If there were misericords in the late medieval choir, like the lovely ones at Gresford, these are long gone.   A mirror leans against the wall but can be laid flat for those who want to see the underside without kneeling down.

Unexpected underside of the credence table, looking very like a misericord

Late 15th Century

In 1483 Richard III granted the Lordship of Bromfield and Yale to Sir William Stanley, which incorporated both Holt Castle and the church.  Stanley made significant changes to the church, removing and replacing the outer walls of the original aisles to widen them, providing them with the Perpendicular style windows, and extended the arcade at the east end.  For reasons unknown, the north aisle is wider than the south aisle. The south aisle chapel is a Lady Chapel. The little leaflet that the church provides suggests, with reservations, that that the chancel, which is slightly out of alignment with the nave, may have been a so-called “weeping chancel,” deliberately and symbolically echoing the images of the crucifixion where Christ’s head is tiltee down to his right.

At the chancel, the two bays of arcades flanking the chancel (the choir and high altar), have much wider four-centred (flattened) arches, providing a very fine contrast to the earlier lancet-shaped arches.  The new arcades were fitted with carved stone heads at the tops of the east and west walls, all but three undetermined male heads.  The other three consist of one male head that is crowned and is probably a king, another depicting a dog and another a grotesque face. 

There were apparently problems with the civil engineering of the new east arcade. The last of the free-standing arcade pillars in the south aisle is at a distinct angle, and there is a pillar at the east end, against the wall, which does not reach the roof, as described on the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust / Heneb website: “To explain anomalies at the east end of the south aisle it has been suggested that because the east window of the aisle was too large for the wall to support, an external buttress had to be placed nearer to this window than was planned. An internal pillar was then constructed where the exterior buttress should have been sited.”  

Mitred figure at St Chad’s, Holt

The tower at the west end, through which you enter the church, has a spiral stair case to the bell tower (closed to the public).  As you go into the nave from the tower, look right.  There is a carving of a figure wearing a mitre, which is a fragment of a medieval bench-end of the sort that you can see in the choirs at Chester Cathedral and Gresford All Saints’, and suggests that there was once some very interesting Gothic wood carving here.  The mitre is consistent with it representing St Chad, but other candidates are also entirely plausible.  During 19th century restoration work the head was removed from the church and for reasons unknown found itself at Holt Hall, where its dignity was severely undermined, having been employed as a newel post. Holt Hall was one of the many of the fine buildings that failed to survive the early 20th century, and when it was taken down in the 1940s the head was returned to St Chad’s.

Also at the west end to the right as you enter the church, in the south aisle, is the wonderful font, elaborately and deeply carved and dated by Edward Hubbard to c.1493 on the basis of the heraldry that appears in amongst the other carved panels.  It is a truly remarkable object, featuring the above-mentioned heraldic emblems, religious symbols and even a number of grotesques.  The heraldic symbols include a stag’s head, which is one of the emblems of Sir William Stanley and the others are the arms of previous lords of Bromfield, the Warenne and Fitzalan families as well as the heraldic shield of King Richard II (reigned 1452-85).   Others are religious symbols showing emblems of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the Lamb of God, the “pelican in her piety,” highly stylized roses representing the Virgin Mary and the ubiquitous gothic acanthus leaves.

The late 15th century font with a reconstruction from one of the interpretation boards showing how the shields may have been coloured

Sir William’s modifications represent a major investment and suggest enormous personal ambition, a desire to put his stamp on the biggest community asset in late medieval Holt.  It did not save him from political manoeuvring.  Although one of the richest men in England, Sir William Stanley was executed for suspected treason by Henry VII in 1495 and the Lordship of Bromfield and Yale reverted to the crown. 

The 17th Century

Musket ball holes in the west wall, south aisle of st Chad’s Church, Holt

The Civil War took place between 22nd August 1642 and 3rd September 1651, and had a massive impact on the Chester area, with opposing forces occupying Holt and Farndon at the strategic river crossing.  Frank Latham sets the scene as it was in 1643: “Because of its prominence on a hilltop overlooking the river the parish church of Farndon was garrisoned by Roundhead troops from 1643 to 1645 which enabled watch to be kept on the Welsh village of Holt and particularly on the castle there which was occupied by the enemy.” With Farndon in the hands of the Parliamentarians and Holt in the hands of the Royalists, armed conflict was almost inevitable, and the Battle of Farndon Bridge in November 1643 appears to have been the beginning of a number of skirmishes.  The castle was taken by the Parliamentarians, but in 1644 was retaken by the Royalists.  In 1647 it was besieged for 9 months. 

Fascinatingly, impact marks of musket balls scar the wall and pillars inside the west end of St Chad’s, which are an evocative reminder of the area’s troubled history at that time, when Royalist soldiers defended the church against the Parliamentarians, with hand-to-hand fighting taking place within the church itself.  You can find these mainly on the west wall of the south aisle (turn right as you walk in from the tower and they are on your right), with a few on the other side as well.  Don’t forget that the north aisle has a doorway with three “loop holes” through which weapons could be fired, only one of these can be seen from the interior, but there are also some marvellous lock fittings. 

Finally, a very small and beautifully decorated late brass plaque in the north aisle chapel should not be missed. Its beautifully reflective surface made it impossible to photograph nicely.  It is dedicated to Thomas Crue, who died in 1666.  The plaque was provided by his brother Silvanus Crue.  All of the imagery, with a skeleton flanked by skulls at its base, columns supporting sundials and hour glasses all reference time, death and the transition of the soul.  On the columns the words FUGIT HORA also reference the passing of time: “time flies.”  At the top, in the centre, a lion rampant stands over a grotesque head.  As well as some lovely engraved mortuary-themed decoration, it contains an acrostic; when read vertically, the first letter of each new line makes up one or more words.  In this case the vertical reading over two verses is THOMAS CRUE, and the full text is as follows (having performed some serious gymnastics to read it against the light):

The life of man incessantly from the womb
Hastneth both day and night unto the tomb
Of mortal life when once the thread is spunne
Man has a life immortal then begunne
A wise man dying lives; and living dies
Such was the main that here intombed lies

Carefull he liv’d gods secret laws to keep
Religiously until to Death or Sleepe
Unto a happy life his soule did bring
Ending this life to live with Christ our King

At the base it reads STIPENDIUM PECCATI MORS EST is a Latin phrase that translates as “The reward of sin is death,” and with dry humour typical of the 18th century, HODIE MIHI CRAS TIBI  translated as “Me today, you tomorrow”.  All of this may sound a little gloomy and morbid, but this was the era of John Donne and equally articulate metaphysical poets who engaged with satire, dark humour and word play, balancing the reality of time and its inevitable consequences with a strong sense of irony and flamboyant wit.

The 18th Century

In the south aisle, heading towards the chancel and on your left, there is a super grave slab that was moved in from the churchyard to protect it. It is a marvellous piece, with a skull and crossed bones, the skull having a somewhat surprisingly beatific smile on its face.  There are also some flowers at its base.  The flowers at bottom left were apparently typical of the 18th century, but the skull and crossed bones were better known from plague graves of the 17th century, and are known as memento mori stones, indicating the inevitability of death.

It is in this period that six bells were added to the tower, made by Rudhalls of Gloucester in 1714.  Presumably, if there had been any misericords these would have been removed either during the 17th century purge of medieval religious motifs, or at this time, although at least parts of the choir stalls were reported to be preserved in 1853, but were stripped out in the 1870s.  In 1720 the church was presented with a clock, which stayed in position until 1901.  This was followed by significant renovation of the church in 1732, during which, very sadly, the the rood loft and screens were removed.  This renovation also accounts for the parapet that replaced the pinnacles, gargoyles and battlements on the south side, although some were left in position on the north side.

A lovely engraved brass plaque near the entrance, on the west wall on the north side is worth looking out for, dedicated to John Lloyd and dating to 1784.

19th – 20th Century

The 19th century restoration between 1871 and 1873 was responsible for adding some of the ornamental features, such as the new seating in the nave and oak screens to separate the chancel from the side chapels, but also removed some of the memorial tablets from the walls.  Restoration work included including the renewal of the camber-beam oak panelled roof of the nave and the sanctuary at the far end of the chancel, re-laying of the floors and repairs to the window tracery.  Interestingly, many memorial tablets were removed during the renovation of the interior, which almost certainly improved it no end, but whatever remained of the rood screen and choir stalls were also stripped out.  It is possible that choir stalls and some stained glass were removed at this time, as they were mentioned by a visitor in the early 1850s. 

The interior ceiling corbels that support the camber beams were provided with sculptural elements, all human heads.  You will need binoculars or a long camera lens to see them, high up and in shadow, but a couple of examples are shown here.  There is no mention of them in any of the texts, so it is unclear if this dates to the major reworking during the 15th century, or to the 19th century restoration and reconstruction of the ceiling.

Nineteenth century restoration activities can often result in some hair-raising alterations, but St Chad’s seems to have got off quite lightly, retaining some fine original features.  The attempts to restore some of the original ambience were fairly sympathetic, and the new features were not unattractive.  As nineteenth century restorations go, it was not unsuccessful.

In 1896 the bells were provided with a new iron frame and the following year a weathervane was added.

The single stained glass window in St Chad’s, Holt. Early 20th century.

Since then, the main additions to the church have been the new clock in 1902 and a stained glass window later in the early 20th century. The new clock and chimes were fitted to commemorate the coronation of King Edward VIII and Queen Alexandra in 1902.  The stained glass window consists of four panels depicting saints.  The two central panels show St Chad holding an image of the church in his hand, and St Asaph (the church is in the diocese of St Asaph). The outer panels show St David, the patron saint of Wales and St Swithin, reflecting an older connection with Winchester Cathedral in 1547.  It is very nicely done for a 20th century window, emulating the gothic and works well with the rest of the church’s features.

In the 1960s the lighting and heating were improved and the roof coverings were restored.

Detail of Victorian pulpit, St Chad’s Holt

Uncertain dates

It is not known for sure when the tower was built.  One authority puts it in the 17th century, but it is more likely that is is much earlier, probably late 15th century.

Probably late medieval, but not officially dated, are consecration crosses, one of which is next to the radiator to the right of the credence table, and there are other similar consecration crosses marking places that have been consecrated by a member of the clergy elsewhere in the church.

There is a magnificent chest not far from the west end, which had four locks, each representing a keyholder who had to be present when the chest was opened.  This has not been dated, but realistically looks as though it could date to any time between the late 15th to the 17th century.
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Chest in St Chad’s, Holt

 

Today

There has also been some modernization to improve lighting and heating, which were probably much-needed.  The pipework for the heating system is fantastic – a remarkable feature in its own right, just as the heating system in Chester Cathedral makes its own contribution to domestic-industrial history.

A replacement sandstone block interrupting some engraved text on an external wall of the church

Obviously the church requires ongoing maintenance.  Sandstone is very vulnerable to pollution, and some of the blocks have had to be repaired using modern sandstone, but thanks to the church being set back from the road this is minor work.  It also looks as though some of the four gargoyles on the tower have experienced some damage, but that too is inevitable.  Overall, St Chad’s seems to be in really excellent condition and is clearly well cared for and appreciated.

The church organizers seem to be doing a very good job of balancing the contrasting demands on St Chad’s.  As well as the provision of plenty of information for visitors about the history and heritage of the church as a tourist attraction, the church is managed as a community asset for services, weddings, funerals and community activities.  Reflecting a concern with modern global issues, there are four “millennium banners,” made by members of the congregation to welcome in the year 2000, which capture local scenes but represent the universal ideas of love, hope, peace and faith.

 

Visiting St Chad’s, Holt

The “Roman pillar”

There is currently no dedicated website, so there is no generally available online information about opening times.  I was able to walk in during the day one bank holiday Monday on a whim, and found it open. On the other hand, I was there some months later at around 1230 on a Wednesday and it was closed, but I found that it had opened later in the afternoon.  There is a Facebook page but it has no details about opening times and contact details.  Please note that the email address on the National Churches Trust page bounces (i.e. it is defunct).  This is a living church, with Sunday services, weddings and funerals, so even if you do find out what the opening times may be, there will be times when it is not possible to gain access.

There is plenty of parking along the road, but there is also a public car park just a few minutes walk away on the other side of the rectangular grass area, Church Green, on the other side of the road from the church.  There is a car park next to the Dee on the Farndon side, but this is very small and fills up quickly at the weekend and during the school holidays, and floods when the river is up.

One of the bilingual interpretation panels in the church, describing the early development of the town

Information boards and circular panels on short pedestals explain the heritage of the church and are nicely done and for the most part do not intrude on the look and feel of the church.  A small black and white leaflet was available on the table to the right in the tower as you walk in, consisting of two sides of A4, folded, that lists the key features to see in the church.

For those worried about steps and accessibility, the church can be visited without having to negotiate any obstacles, as there is a ramp from the tower into the nave.  There are plenty of pews for giving irritable legs a rest.  Outside, there is a  wide path that runs along the south side of the church and a narrower one along the north side and these both felt safe underfoot. There are also tracks through the churchyard, but if you are looking for a particular grave, note that the grassy spaces between graves are very uneven and you need to take seriously good care where you place your feet.  I suspect that it gets very muddy during rainy periods, so appropriate footwear is recommended.

This would make an excellent start or finish to a walk along the River Dee, which has footpaths on both sides of the river.  The late medieval bridge is itself a joy.  On the Holt side a visit could easily take in Holt Castle as well and on the Farndon side there is, of course, the other St Chad’s.  There’s a pub next door to the Holt church that advertises food and a garden, which I haven’t yet tried, but might be handy for the end of a walk.  There are other pubs and coffee shops on both sides of the river, all serving food.


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Sources:

Visitor information in St Chad’s, Holt

Interpretation boards and panels

Free leaflet:  20 Minutes of Discovery Around St Chad’s Church Holt

 

Books and papers:

Farmer, David 2011 (5th edition).  Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press

Hubbard, Edward 1986.  The Buildings of Wales.  Clwyd (Denbighshire and Flintshire). Penguin Books and University of Wales Press

Latham, Frank. 1981.  Farndon: the History of a Cheshire Village. Farndon Local History Society


Websites:

Archaeodeath 
Skulls in Stone and Brass: Inside Holt Church
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/skulls-in-stone-and-brass-inside-holt-church/
Masters of Holt
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/masters-of-holt/

Based In Churton
Big and bold: All Saints’ Church in the small village of Gresford
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-43a
Gresford All Saints’ Church – exterior gargoyles and grotesques
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-498
Gresford All Saints’ Church – a beginner’s guide to funerary monuments
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-49Z
Miracles, myths, demons and the occasional grin: Misericords in the Chester-Wrexham area #2:  The churches of Gresford All Saints’, Malpas St Oswald’s and Bebington St Andrew’s
https://wp.me/pcZwQK-4Ey

British Listed Buildings
The Parish Church of St Chad, Holt
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300001596-parish-church-of-st-chad-holt

Cadw
The Parish Church of St Chad, reference 1596
https://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=1596

Coflein
St Chad’s, Holt
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/165283/?term=holt&pg=2
(images at https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/165283/images?term=holt)
Holt Bridge; Farndon Bridge, Holt, Wrexham
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/24043/

Early Tourists in Wales
North side of the churchyard
https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/material-culture/buildings/churchyards/special-graves/north-side-of-the-churchyard/

CPAT / HENEB – Wrexham Churches Survey
Church of St Chad, Holt
https://heneb.org.uk/archive/cpat/Archive/churches/wrexham/16796.htm
or https://cpat.org.uk/Archive/churches/wrexham/16796.htm 

National Churches Trust
St Chad’s, Holt
https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/st-chad-holt

Peoples Collection Wales
St Chad’s Church, Holt
https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/435519#?xywh=0%2C-55%2C799%2C642

St Chad’s, Holt – Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Chads-Church-Holt/102667013120267

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One of the many heads at the tops of the aisle walls

 

A thoroughly enjoyable visit to a splendidly sunny Chester Zoo

2 Replies

I’ve been a member of Chester Zoo for years, although I cannot remember the last time I got around to visiting.  It is a super place to visit at this time of year, because although there are plenty of people around, and quite a few young kids, it is anything but crowded and there’s no queueing or having to wait in turn for a good view. I was supposed to be doing good works in my garden today, but looking at the sun, and considering my options, it suddenly seemed like a good idea to abandon the weeds and go and inspect the baby elephant in person.

Last time I was there I was really impressed with some of the innovative changes, not only to the animal houses and paddocks but to the walkways between enclosures, which included boardwalks and raised walkways, with a growing emphasis on flora as well as fauna.  All of the walkways are lined with what are now increasingly mature trees and shrubs, many of them specimen pieces, and lots of them labelled with their species name and additional information.  This lavish plant life extends into many of the animal enclosures.  There is a sense of everywhere being green and floral wherever you look, and this is really impressive.  The new zone based around a wending water feature is particular lavish in this respect, giving a real sense of being out of the busy world beyond the zoo.  All of the green and water areas support not only the official zoo residents but the local wildlife too, including water birds, garden birds and insect life, both of the crawling and flying varieties.  Plant species have been selected, for example, to encourage bees, and the lowly mallards looked very much at home.

As ever at Chester Zoo the emphasis is on conservation and their breeding programme, and there were plenty of babies around to demonstrate their successes, as well as multiple  information boards dotted around that explain not only the zoo’s residents and their habitats but also how the zoo itself is helping to promote their survival worldwide, with partnerships with other organizations.

It was far from hot today, although the spring sun was lovely, but it was terrific to see many of the animals enjoying their water features.  There were notable exceptions, including the giant otters who were having a marvellous time sunbathing, a seriously mellow lioness and a very lazy cheetah who seemed to melting into the sunshine.  There was a lot of very contented laziness on display!  At the same time, it is always superb to see various different monkey and apes enjoying their enclosures inside and out, with a lot of energy on display.

The new “pink zone” which has a southeast Asian theme and is organized around a winding circular waterway is excellent, with some great features and, should you be hungry, a southeast Asian-style fast food restaurant.  I had just stuffed myself with an enormous Mr Whippy or I would have gone for it, as that sort of cuisine is just up my street.

The monorail has been taken down, but this has lead to an expansion of the walkways.  At the moment the Heart of Africa section is being reconfigured, meaning that much of that area is not accessible, so the giraffe house is not available, and the zebras were not visible, but this should change by the summer.  At the moment some of the bird venues are closed due to bird flu, a very good precaution.

 

 

And it did!

Opening times and prices are on the Chester Zoo website here. You can download the map from the Zoo’s website here, or you can pay a £1.00 for a printed version at the ticket office.   All the Chester Zoo people, whether you are having your bag checked at the security desk, buying an ice cream or asking directions are super-friendly and really helpful.

A great day out. It is super to see how the zoo continues to innovate and to extend its offering.

 

Day Trip: The elegant Augustinian Haughmond Abbey near Shrewsbury

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Interpretation board at Haughmond Abbey.  The “You Are Here” text at far right (the south end of the site) marks the location of the interpretation board. The church remains only as a few courses of stone at far left (north) but leaves a clear footprint of its layout.

One of the fascinating ruined monastic buildings that I visited during my October 2024 trip to Shropshire, was the sprawling Haughmond Abbey, just a few miles northeast of Shrewsbury, and very easy to reach.  The Romanesque survivors at the site are particularly delightful, giving the site a charm and subtle glamour that is largely missing from most of the somewhat repetitive gothic establishments that followed.

Haughmond was the first Augustinian monastery that I have visited, and it is unusual in being so large for an Augustinian establishment.  The followers of St Augustine of Hippo, also known as Austins or Black Canons, followed a rather different set of guidelines from those of the Benedictines, Cluniacs and Cistercians and others who followed the Rule of St Benedict, of which more below.  Most Augustinian monasteries were priories, but Haughmond was raised from a priory to an abbey in the mid-12th century, one of only 9 in England to do so, and its ground plan is extensive.  Its design borrows extensively from its St Benedict-inspired predecessors, but there are notable differences too.

The visible remains of Haughmond relate to the buildings founded as an Augustinian abbey in the 1130s, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.  Some documentary evidence is supplied by what remains of its cartularies (collection of charters) assembled between 1478-1487 as well as records of leasing agreements from the 14th to the 16th century, both of which provide information about its economic activities from the 12 century onward.  Further information was provided by excavations. The first of these were carried out by William St John Hope and Harold Brakspear in 1907, and were interestingly financed mainly by public subscription, reflecting local interest in the site.  Part of this was clearance of debris but they found the remains of the 11th century church and  revealed many of the remains of the early church and priory.  When the Ministry of Works in 1933  took over the site they too undertook clearance works and further excavations, at the south end of the site, took place in 1958 . In the 1970s, Jeffrey West and Nicholas Palmer concentrated on the various phases of the abbey church and and surveyed the abbey’s surviving walls.  In 2002 a survey by English Heritage not only found the location of the original gatehouse but located the abbey precinct’s boundaries and many of the features that lay within those boundaries, including important aspects of the drainage system.
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The Augustinians

The earliest known representation of St Augustine from the 6th Century in the Lateran, Rome. Source: Wikipedia

The Augustinian order, like the traditional medieval monasticism that subscribed to the ideas of 6th century St Benedict, looked to an earlier time and an earlier authority on which to base their own approach to monastic living.  St Augustine (354–430) was born in Roman North Africa in 345. Before a visit to Milan he had been closely associated with the Manichean religion before meeting Christian intellectuals in Milan.  On his return to North Africa his own inclination as a Christian was to embrace the monastic life, but he was persuaded to take orders as an ordained priest, partly because Christianity was a minority religion in the area at that time, and although he accepted this role, he also received permission from the bishop of Hippo (now Annaba in Algeria) to create a community of Christian men and women who renounced wealth in favour of a communal life of religious service.  He later became the bishop of Hippo himself.

Augustine’s guidelines were not written down as a single set of rules like those of St Benedict, but were assembled from a letter to his sister a nun, which offered thoughts on how a monastic establishment should be run.  These had no influence on the development of monastic life until the 11th century and it is not known whether the rule itself was rediscovered or whether Augustine’s ideas were simply adopted from his other extensive writings to create a rule carrying the saint’s authority, applicable not only to monasteries but other religious communities, including hospitals.  

The Augustinian monastic organization was founded in the 11th century, with papal approval.  Its monks were popularly known as the Black Canons, canons being members of a monastic community of priests.  Unlike those monastic orders based on the Rule of St Benedict, the Augustinians, or Austins, were ordained priests and were able to leave their monastery to work in the community to carry out pastoral work. The foundation of hospitals was also an integral part of many of the Augustinian establishments.

The central ideas of the rule by the 12th century were that canons should emulate the apostles, abandoning their possessions, leading a celibate, contemplative life that included prayer, in which personal poverty, self-discipline, mutual responsibility and charitable generosity were more important than austerity and seclusion. Augustinian canons could spend time in the community and conduct services in churches.  The maximum number of canons permitted in a single establishment was 24, and at the time of the Dissolution there was half this number at Haughmond.  No two establishments necessarily operated in the same way, although many of the monasteries shared the basic Benedictine layout of the main buildings gathered around cloisters.  Many were very small, usually holding the status of priory, but Haughmond was promoted to an abbey early in its history.  It was unusually large, and was gathered around two cloisters, as well as an infirmary, now lost.
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Entering the site today – orienting yourself

Haughmond Site Plan. Source: Iain Ferris 2010 (see sources at end)

The site is entered from the south where the Abbot’s Hall, private rooms and reredorter (latrine block) are located (at the bottom of the plan at left).  In the medieval period all visitors would only have entered at the opposite end of the site, to the north, where the remains of the church and its two transepts are to be found.  The monastic complex is an integrated whole, incorporating both domestic and religious functions in a single unit, although it grew up over time, advancing from north to south, beginning with the church, in the opposite direction from which you enter.  Repairs and reinventions mean that there are many layers to understand within the abbey complex.

Sandwiched between the Abbot’s Hall at the south end of the monastery and the church at the north end are two cloisters (square arrangements of buildings, each around a central green area).  The two cloisters are separated by the frater (refectory) that makes up the north wall of the southern cloister and the south wall of the northern one.

The official guidebook has a recommended circular route either straight ahead from the entrance, via the Abbot’s Hall, or via the reredorter (latrine block) to the right.  It does help to have a site plan to walk with, either in the guide book or printed out, particularly given that even with experience of previous monasteries, it’s a complex site with some features only surviving to the height of a few courses of stone.
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The development of Haughmond Abbey

A splendid reconstruction of Haughmond Abbey by Josep Casals for English Heritage / Historic England. Source: English Heritage. My annotations based on the plan shown in the Haughmond Abbey guidebook. North is to the left, where the church is located. Click to enlarge

Like most high-status buildings, Haughmond changed considerably over time.  It began in the 11th century as an isolated community. The reasons for the location have not been recorded but the English Heritage survey of the site suggests the following:

[T]he comparative remoteness of the area on the woodland fringe, the shelter provided by the slope and the ready availability of building stone are all valid explanations. However, these conditions apply widely along the foot of Haughmond Hill and so it was probably the occurrence of a number of springs along this particular section of the escarpment which was the determining factor. The need for a reliable water supply for drinking, washing and carrying away waste hardly needs stating but there is also the possibility that the first community chose to settle here because the springs already had an established spiritual significance. (Pearson et al 2003)

Small entrance to Haughmond Abbey from the south, now the entrance for visitors.  The main gateway was at the north.

One of the important achievements of the combined excavations was to establish that an earlier abbey had preceded the 12th century Augustinian priory.  The remains of a  small cruciform stone church were found beneath the south transept and the northeast cloister and it is suggested that it may have been built by an eremetical community, either in the late Saxon or early Norman period. A small cemetery of 24 graves that was found immediately to the west of that church included child burials, suggesting that it was serving the community at large, not merely the monastery.

The monastery was later re-established by the FitzAlan family under William FitzAlan I in the 1130s as a priory using the Rule St Augustine to guide its activities.  This included rebuilding of the church and cloister that provided the Augustinian priory an integral part of its later identity.  It was so richly endowed that it was soon given abbey status.  The FitzAlan family continued to be patrons of the abbey and were buried at the site until the mid-14th century.  They eventually transferred their loyalties to another establishment when the Lestrange family took over as primary patrons, their endowments allowing further expansion.  During the 13th and 14th centuries further elaborations were made, and in the early 16th century it underwent remodeling, just in time for the Dissolution in 1535.

Information panel at Haughmond showing the daily liturgy followed by the Black Canons. Click to enlarge

As a wealthy abbey, Haughmond was not amongst the first to be closed down, and lasted until 1539, at which time the remaining community members were pensioned off.  After it had been plundered for its treasures for Henry VIII’s coffers the abbot’s quarters were converted to a country home for Sir Edward Littleton, with some of the other buildings remaining in use.  It continued to be a home until the Civil War when a fire put an end to its residential use. It was eventually handed over to the Office of Works in 1933.  The 2002 survey by English Heritage established the extent of the abbey precinct and identified its water management systems, neither of which had been fully understood before.  The excavations found numerous objects, Romanesque architectural stonework, human remains, animal bones, pottery and metalwork all dating to the abbey’s occupation.
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The Abbey Layout

The preservation of the buildings is very variable, with the abbot’s residence and hall and chapter house being the main and very impressive survivors.  The inner wall of the west range survives, and there are some fascinating architectural details dotted around, but most of the site is represented by low courses of stone that reach only a few feet high.  This does not undermine the visit, because these lower courses preserve the layout of a complex site, which offers a great many insights into life at Haughmond.

The monastic precinct

Plan of the abbey in the 2002 survey. Source: Pearson et al survey report 2003, English Heritage (see Sources at end).

The site is large, but only represents the core buildings.  The monastic precinct was much bigger.  Access to the monastic precinct would have been via the main gatehouse.  The remains of this was found in the 2002 survey, to the west of the church.  The boundaries of the monastic precinct were not found in 1907, but were revealed by the 2002 English Heritage survey.  This provided a good idea of the full extent of the site, making it easier to visualize it beyond its current footprint, and at the same time offered an entirely new interpretation of the site’s drainage management, always an important aspect of monastic establishments which, as well as requiring fresh water, had waste management and other drainage requirements.

The church

Haughmond Abbey Church interpretation panel. The sacred east end with the presbytery/chancel is on the left, with the nave to the west on the right, and a dividing screen between them. Click to enlarge.

Although there is nothing left to give an idea of how the interior would have looked, the very lowest courses of the church retain its footprint, and excavations have provided some more information, derived from the masonry of the site.  The church had the usual cruciform plan of a long nave, short chancel,  two side transepts, 60m (200ft) long in total, with a short tower over the crossing.   Visitors would have entered into the nave of the church via the north porch, penetrating no further than the church nave.  The nave was divided from the sacred east end of the church by a stone screen.  The cloister and the rest of the monastic establishment would have been completely out of bounds for ordinary visitors.  The canons would enter from the cloister side.  Interestingly, the site is terraced beneath the line of the church, meaning that the altar would have been physically higher than the transepts, involving a great many steps to reach the high altar, which would have been higher than the nave, emphasizing the hierarchy of the church from sacred east to secular west.  The transepts would have contained chapels where the ordained priests could say masses to the dead.  There were also altars, other than the main altar, to St Andrew and St Anne.  An aisle was added to the north side of the nave, the pier bases of which were found during the 1907 excavations.

Looking down the terraced profile of what remains of the church

The main cloister

The processional doorway

The church makes up the north side of the cloister, offering it some protection from the elements and allowing in the sun, which helped to light both the church and the cloister buildings.  The main cloister was rectangular and the other three sides were made up of three ranges of buildings with a green, the garth, at its centre. Nothing remains of the walkway that would have connected these four ranges of buildings.

Connecting the cloister or the nave was the processional doorway, a magnificent 12th century feature through which the monks could carry reliquaries, saint images and portable shrines on days of particular religious significance.  Like the chapter house, it has elaborate patterning on the out of the recessed arches and is flanked by two statues representing St Peter (left) and St Paul (right).

The facade of the Chapter House

The most important building in the east range, which is partly made up by the north transept of the church, is the chapter house, where the daily business of the monastery was discussed. Its  lovely facade includes the entrance flanked by two windows, all with receding layers of arching featuring decorative patterns, and featuring eight statues showing saints between the slender columns.  Although the arches belong to the 12th century, the statues were added in the 14th.  Some are in rather better condition than others, but include St Augustine, a female saint who perhaps represents St Winifred of Shrewsbury Abbey, St Thomas Becket, St Catherine of Alexandria, St John the Evangelist, St John the Baptist, and St Margaret of Antioch.  The building underwent further changes at the beginning of the 16th century, probably including the addition of a wooden ceiling.  The tombstones and the font were probably moved here from the church after the monastery went out of use.

Interpretation board discussing the chapter house saints

 

Interior of the chapter house

Detail of one of the interpretation panels

The remains of the west range.

Opposite the chapter house is what remains of the western range.  The inner wall survives, with two tall arched recesses, which  probably contained a laver, a basin that the monks used for washing before eating.  Further along at the northern end adjacent to the processional doorway an entrance lead into the western range, with decorated capitals at the top of the columns.  The outer walls have been lost.  The western range was used differently from one establishment to another, and it is not known how this example was used.

Gateway into the western cloister, showing multiple levels of structural change

The southern range was made up of the refectory (dining hall) with an undercroft (storage area) below.  The floor of the dining hall is long gone, but some decorative features remain in the walls, and it once had a great window over a central pointed arch.  The undercroft opened out into the monastic precinct via an arched entrance and and two flanking windows.  The remains of the pillars that supported the refectory wall remain, together with a drain running towards the north.  The full length of the refectory was 30ft 6ins (c.9m) wide by c.81ft (c.25m) long.

The refectory undercroft with pillars and drain

Interpretation panel showing the refectory and its undercroft

Behind the chapter house and overlapping with half of the dormitory is what is known as the Longnor’s Garden, now an empty space with a wall behind it, established in the mid-15th century for Abbot Longor.  As well as a dovecote it was presumably used to grow herbs, for both cooking and medicinal use.

The little cloister

Kitchen ovens

A narrow gap at the east end of the refectory allowed access from the main cloister into the little cloister.  A low line of stone marks the line of the former walkway that surrounded the little cloister. This contained another four ranges, the northernmost of which was made up by the refectory.  The entrance to the refectory was probably originally from the main cloister, but once the little cloister was established, the entrance was on this side, which makes sense as the early 14th century western range consists of a surprisingly large kitchen area with two giant ovens and chimneys.  The 1332 document by Abbot Longnor that permitted this survives, stating that the prior and monastic community “may have from henceforth a new kitchen assigned for the frater, which we will cause to be built with all speed ; in which they may cause to be prepared by their special cook such food as pertains to the kitchen of that which shall be served to them, every day, by the canons and ministers appointed to that end by them by leave of the abbot.”

The kitchen and refectory, side by side. To the left of the refectory wall, and in front of the ovens is the line of little cloister’s walkway.

Opposite the kitchens were the two-storey dormitory and its undercroft, set at an angle to the little cloister and terminating at the south side with an entrance into the reredorter (latrine block), which was set at an angle to the dormitory. The undercroft survives, but the upper levels that made up the dormitory are now lost. The building is 125 ft long by 27 ft wide, with a row of columns along the centre, dividing it into eleven bays.  The remaining stonework preserves indications of doorways, windows and fireplaces.  In the mid-15th century the north end of the dormitory was divided off to provide private space for the quarter’s of the abbot’s second in command, the prior.

View part-way along the dormitory, looking towards the chapter house

The drain of the reredorter

At the southern end of the little cloister were the abbot’s apartments, consisting of a hall and private rooms.  The remains of an earlier and much smaller set of13th century apartments survives at the east, but was replaced by the much more ambitious, decorated 14th century buildings that partly survive today.  The main feature of the hall is an enormous pointed window, with fragments of stone tracery remaining, set over twin pointed arches, and flanked by two small towers.  Three sets of windows, with tracery, let light in on either side, and again provide the rooms with gothic flair. The Abbot’s private rooms feature a distinctive 5-sided oriel window with distinctive decorative elements.

The abbot’s private rooms on the right, and his hall to the left

The abbot’s hall

The fireplace in the abbot’s hall

 

Interpretation panel for the abbot’s hall

The oriel window in the abbot’s private rooms

Some of the decorative features in the abbot’s private rooms

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Records mention an infirmary at Haughmond, as well as a library.  The library would usually be closely associated with the chapter house, but there is no sign of one today.  In early 20th century plans the infirmary is marked where the abbot’s hall is now located, and the infirmary has not actually been located.  The consensus is that the local topography means that it could not have been to the east of the site.  Two fishponds were not far away, and others were associated with mills.
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Economic activities

View of the western side of the monastery from the outside

Although patrons were important for establishing monastic establishments and continuing to support them, many of the endowments took the form of land, and the success of a monastery was largely dependent on how well that land and other assets were managed.  There were two main models for making an income from these assets – either by the owners working it themselves or by leasing it out.  In the case of Haughmond the assets included considerable amounts of farmed land, as well as fulling (wool processing) and corn mills.  Although lying within a royal forest, the abbey was given limited permission to assart land (clear woodland and shrubs for farming), and also acquired newly assarted lands in the area.  It owned land under cultivation but also established cattle farming on higher ground.  Lands were not only in Shropshire but from the late 12th century it also owned land in Cheshire, Worcestershire, Wales, Sussex and Norfolk.  Fishing rights were also important, and the abbey had its own fishponds, as well as fishing rights both nearby and from the river Dee at Chester, the latter doubtlessly annoying the Benedictine monks of St Werburgh’s in Chester.  It also received income from six churches that had been passed to its control, including Hanmer in Flintshire, the only one outside Shropshire; it had properties in Shrewsbury that it rented out; and was granted the rights to and a one half salt-pan in Nantwich.

Many small bequests were made to secure prayers, to assist the infirmary and to provide for the poor who came to the monastery gate for alms.  The monastery also sold corrodies, which were substantial gifts made to the monastery in return for food and housing, a form of pension. On the other hand, corrodies were also provided to loyal servants, in which case they represented an outlay rather than an income.

Farming land just beyond Haughmond Abbey

It is thought that between the 13th and early 14th centuries the abbey restructured in order to consolidate the dispersed properties to make them easier to manage, something that happened at a lot of other monastic establishments that found themselves in this situation, causing real management difficulties.  By selling some lands and acquiring others in more suitable locations, consolidation made management much easier and less costly.  At least some of the land was leased out, but other lands were worked directly,  However the surviving records are insufficient to allow a clear view of how well the abbey managed its assets, how all of its lands were used and what sort of activity provided the most income.

In spite of the recorded assets, in the early 16th century the abbey clearly experienced difficulties, both in the management of its estates and in the internal discipline of the monastery itself.  This is put down to poor management by two of its abbots.  Under its final abbot, Thomas Corveser, it began to recover and it was still sufficiently wealthy to avoid immediate closure in 1535, surviving another four years, and the surviving personnel were provided with generous pensions.
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Final Comments

This is a very quiet site, and because it feels so peaceful and retains some lovely features of its 12th century Romanesque origins, has a particular charm to it.  I particularly like that some of the domestic buildings that rarely survive at other sites, including the vast hearths in the former kitchen, and the reredorters connected to the dormitory, can be clearly made out.  I was expecting the Augustinian arrangement to have significant differences from Benedictine prototypes, but there was nothing much on the ground to differentiate them.  The decorative features certainly mark them out as less austere than, for example, the Cistercians, but otherwise the architectural concept of a monastery in the medieval period is impressively uniform.
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Visiting

Haughmond Abbey is an English Heritage site.  It was open free of charge when I was there in October 2024, but its opening times and ticket prices may vary with the season.  See details on the English Heritage website here.  The postcode for those of you with SatNav is SY4 4RW.  The guide book, published in 2000, claims that the little building on the left as you enter is a museum, but this was very firmly closed when I visited. Perhaps it is open during the summer, or it may have shut down for good by now.  Please let me know if you find out!

There are interpretation boards throughout the site, which help to explain it.  The helpful guide booklet by Iain Ferris is available from online retailers, but may also be available from English Heritage sites with gift shops in the area.  It combines Haughmond, Lilleshall and Moreton Corbet Castle in the same 24-page booklet, with 14 pages dedicated to Haughmond and the Augustinians, 8 pages to Lilleshall and 2 to Moreton Corbet Castle.  It includes the ever-essential site layouts of Haughmond and Lilleshall.  There are also very useful details about the history of the site on the English Heritage’s Haughmond Abbey History page here.  If you are interested in following a trail of some of the Shropshire abbeys including Haughmond, Mike Salter’s booklet “A Shropshire Abbeys Trail” is a good place to start, available to purchase online.

Other sites in the area, a selection of which would help to make up a good day out include Wroxeter Roman City (about which I have posted here), the Cluniac Order’s Wenlock Priory at Much Wenlock (posted about here), another Augustinian abbey at Lilleshall, Moreton Corbet Castle, and of course the town of Shrewsbury itself, with its lovely architecture, terrific abbey church (within the outskirts of the town) and the excellent Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery. with its modern displays connecting different periods of the history of both town and area.

The abbot’s hall, with the remains of its predecessor in the foreground

 

Sources

Books and Papers

Angold, M.J. Angold, George C. Baugh, Marjorie M. Chibnall, D.C. Cox, D.T.W. Price, Margaret Tomlinson, B.S. Trinder 1973.  Houses of Augustinian canons: Abbey of Haughmond, in (eds.) A.T. Gaydon, and R.B. Pugh.  A History of the County of Shropshire: Volume 2. London.
British History Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol2/pp62-70 

Burton, Janet 1994. Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain. Cambridge University Press

Chadwick, Peter 1986. Augustine. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press

Levitan, Bruce 1989.  Ancient Monuments Laboratory Report 118/89. Vertebrate Remains from Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire. English Heritage
https://historicengland.org.uk/research/results/reports/3917/VERTEBRATEREMAINSFROMHAUGHMONDABBEYSHROPSHIRE

Pearson, Trevor, Stuart Ainsworth and Graham Brown 2003.  Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire: Survey Report Archaeological Investigation Report Series AI/10/2003. English Heritage
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1893-1/dissemination/pdf/englishh2-349481_1.pdf

Salter, Mike 2009.  A Shropshire Abbeys Trail. Folly Publications

St John Hope, William H. and Harold Brakspear 1909. Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire Archaeological Journal, 66 (1909), p.281–310
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1132-1/dissemination/pdf/066/066_281_310.pdf

White, Carolinne 2008. The Rule of St Benedict. Penguin

Ferris, Iain 2000. Haughmond Abbey, Lilleshall Abbey, Moreton Corbet Castle. English Heritage

West, Jeffrey J. and Nicholas Palmer 2014. Haughmond Abbey. Excavation of a 12th-century cloister in its historical and landscape context. English Heritage


Websites

ArchaeoDeath
Identities in Stone: Haughmond Abbey’s Saints and Spolia. By Prof. Howard M. R. Williams,
October 17th 2016
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/identities-in-stone-haughmond-abbeys-saints-and-spolia/

English Heritage
Haughmond Abbey
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/
History of Haughmond Abbey
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/history/
Medieval Women and Haughmond Abbey
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/haughmond-abbey/history/women-at-haughmond/

Historic England
Haughmond Abbey: an Augustinian monastery on the site of an earlier religious foundation, a post-Dissolution residence and garden remains
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1021364?section=official-list-entry

 

Day Trip: The RAF Museum Midlands at Cosford, near Telford

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Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter (replica) in Hangar 2

Even if aircraft and aviation history are not really the first things that spring to your mind when you are looking for a museum to visit on a day out in the general area, the RAF Museum at Cosford offers a thoroughly absorbing experience.  Aeronautical development has progressed so rapidly since the early 20th century that the first engineers and pilots might well find all the new innovations, capabilities and capacities that are on display at the museum fairly miraculous, and these have been significantly surpassed by much newer models.

This was my third visit.  The first visit was with my father who as a school boy at Calday Grammar on the Wirral had loved being in the Air Cadets, and went on to do his National Service in the RAF.  The second was with a friend whose father had served as a  Flight Engineer from before his 20th birthday during the Second World War, working and flying on Avro Lancasters.  Both my father and my friend brought away very personal experiences of the museum, but even without  these intimate connections, the RAF museum at Cosford is a rich journey into aeronautical history.  There is splendid innovation, superb technology, surprisingly aesthetic appeal and, in some cases, the sheer immensity of some of these vast monsters.  The full-life biographies of the aircraft themselves are themselves compelling, but the museum also tells dozens of stories about the people whose lives were embedded in the RAF, as well as in commercial travel, both in times of war and peace.===
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Hangar 4. Mikoyan-Guevich “MiG” 15bis.  Single seater jet intercept fighter, Russian-designed and notable for its use in Korea where its superior performance came as a shock to American pilots.  Maximum speed 688 mph. 1949-1970s

The aircraft are not exclusively British. There are American, German and Russian planes, as well as those built as joint enterprises.  The information boards compare and contrast them with contemporary British aircraft that they came up against, in terms of maneuverability, speed and technical specifications.  As well as planes there are also a couple of helicopters, staggeringly massive things that don’t seem even remotely aerodynamic, as well as some supporting ground vehicles including tanks, cars and aircraft tugs.  Although less obviously comprehensible, the range of aircraft engines on display also contributes to the story of aviation and its development, with information panels explaining how the engines improved the viability of aircraft.

Hangar 4. Hawker Siddley Vulcan in the foreground. A fabulous-looking long-range medium delta-wing bomber that was eventually converted for use as an air-to-air refuelling tanker

The focus on aircraft is not exclusively military.  Although there are a lot of those, several of the planes on display were commercial airliners of different sizes, built for carrying passengers, and the history of some of these early pioneers is well explained.

The museum is immense, taking up four gigantic hangars, each one with its own particular themes.  Although each of the Hangars is themed, there are some aircraft that don’t fit neatly into the themes, allowing for the inclusion of a lot of variety throughout all the hangars.

Bristol Britannia 312 turboprop aircraft known as The Whispering Giant due to is comparatively quiet engines. It first flew in August 1952. Due problems with the turbine engine less than 90 were made and sold to both civilian airlines, like the now defunct BOAC passenger carrier, and the RAF.

The Hangars

It is worth taking some time before you start your tour to have a look at the wall maps in the reception area, which provide details of how the different hangars connect. The numbering of the hangars is a little counter intuitive, because the first of the four that you visit is Hangar 2 (H2), then Hangar 3 (H3), then Hangar 4 (H4) and the last hangar that you visit is Hangar 1 (H1). The maps are dotted throughout the hangars but in order not to miss anything it is a good idea to sort it all out in your head in advance.  It is easy, for example, to completely miss the second hangar on your visit, because it is connected to the first hangar that you reach via two small doors that are relatively unobtrusive.  There is a guide book that has a copy of this map, copied below.  More visiting details are at the end as usual.

The site map from the Souvenir Guide (2024, Royal Air Force Museum), page 72

Hangars 2 and 3

The first hangar that you visit is Hangar 2, or H2.  To reach Hangar 2 the route takes visitors outside, passing between three magnificent aircraft, each with information boards, before passing a fourth, the innovative, versatile and very successful PBY Catalina flying boat and amphibious aircraft, at the entrance into Hangar 2.

On the other side of the door is a gallery dedicated to stories about RAF experiences between 1918 and 2018, before you pass into the hangar itself.

1940 wooden emergency exit hatch from the cockpit of Hawker Hurricane P2798 showing the cartoon cat Figaro, the personal marking of Wing Commander Ian Gleed, pilot and Second World War fighter ace

The function of the RAF, the world’s first independent air farce, remains unchanged across a hundred years: its mission is to defend the UK, to attack if required, to support in times of humanitarian crisis and to move people and equipment quickly across the world.

Like the other small galleries in the four hangars, this displays information about the immense variety of men and women who have served and continue to serve, with the vast range of skills that are required to make this military machine function. They also display the objects that related to those people, both formal and very personal.  This is an excellent way of using objects to connect people to their personal biographies and their official careers and the honours they were awarded.  Be sure to enter H3 from one door and return to H2 via the other so that you visit both galleries.

Page from the Souvenir Guide (Royal Air Force Museum 2024, p.32) talking about some of the highly personal measures that RAF personnel took to help them face the tasks before them.  Objects like these are just as much a part of RAF history as the aircraft in the museum

The main hangars in H2 and H3 focus on War in the Air and Test Flight, a mix of wartime and post-war aircraft.  Some of those on display are such icons that it is almost impossible not to reach out and touch.  In the First and Second World Wars, many planes were employed before it was possible to put them through their paces before they were needed in combat, and they were essentially put to the test in active service.

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The iconic Spitfire MK1, the oldest surviving example

 

The Boulton Paul Defiant was vulnerable to Luftwaffe fighters. Instead of being withdrawn from service, these were painted black and moved to night operations, although they were eventually withdrawn altogether.

 

TheGerman Junkers JU-88R-I

Although it is  not possible to convey the sheer immensity of the Avro Lincoln, it is an absolute giant of a thing.  Its design was based on the Lancaster, but although it was too late for a combat role in the Second World War, it served the RAF until 1963, long after the first jet engines had come into use.  Cosford doesn’t have a Lancaster, but this is an imposing creation in its own right.

An Avro Lincoln, giving no impression in this photograph of how massive it truly is

After the Second World War significant investment was made in developing technologies to provide specialized requirements, and testing became increasingly important.  Whilst some aircraft took on important roles in the RAF, others either failed to make it into production or were significantly modified before they were adopted.  The history of aircraft is as much about those that failed, or were not entirely successful, as it is about those that became either fundamental icons or invaluable workhorses of aviation history.  It is this mixture of aircraft biographies and narratives that define Hangars 2 and 3.

 

British Aircraft Corporation TSR2, Combat Prototype

Details of the British Aircraft Corporation TSR2, Combat Prototype

BAe Experimental Aircraft Project

 

Hangar 4

H4 is next, a soaring modern building themed around The Cold War.  It is a truly spectacular building in its own right, both outside and in, a functional and striking space for displaying a huge number of aircraft to best advantage.  This is all about a new generation of fighter and surveillance aircraft, missiles and drones, as well as support vehicles.  Entered from H2 at ground level, you find yourself confronting aircraft overhead, on the same level and below, with lifts as well as stairs to get down to the the lower level.  One of the novelties, apart from the aircraft overhead, is being able to walk along the gallery and view some of the vast machines that are sitting on the lower level face to face.

It is a magnificent visual display but as in the other hangars also has plenty of information about why each type of aircraft was built, and what makes them unique, plus information about the men and women who worked in these different contexts.  At the same time, it addresses the important and often vexed subject of conflicting ideologies and why such ideologies erupt into military action, making military assets a necessary aspect of modern life.  The focus is, as the name of the hangar indicates, the Cold War, and the opposing ideologies that resulted not merely in defensive strategies but also in both armed conflict and, in an attempt to reduce the likelihood of war, such initiatives as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
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The Vickers Valiant of 1955, designed for nuclear strikes, and withdrawn form service in 1965. Group Captain Ken Hubbard, caption if Vickers Valiant XD818 remembers its first drop of a British thermonuclear bomb with the resulting mushroom cloud “a sight of such majesty and grotesque beauty that it defies description.”

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Douglas Dakota

The Lightning, the first RAF fighter capable of flying at twice the speed of sound, but with short operational range

Details of a personalized Handley Page Victor, which entered service in 1958

Sikorsky MH53 Pave Low long range combat, search and rescue helicopter

Sikorsky MH53 Pave Low interior

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Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer light transport

 

Hangar 1

The last of the hangars, H1, is themed along the lines of Transport and Training.  Transport of equipment, personnel and supplies is a major element of airforce logistics, and aircraft designed specifically for these tasks may be either passenger carriers or sometimes gigantic warehouses on wings designed to carry whole platoons or heavy armoured vehicles and armaments.  Training aircraft may be tiny by comparison with some of the vast aircraft in tis hangar, used for acclimatizing trainee pilots and building up the skills of both trainee pilots and other air and ground crew, including engineers.  This hangar also has an excellent display of engines, which also required the training of aircraft engineers, giving insights into the anatomy of these power houses propel aircraft off the ground and keep them in the air.

Fairchild Argus II light transport, which entered service in 1932

Hawker Siddeley Andover E.3A. Originally designed as a transport aircraft, it was converted to carry out calibration duties on radar and radio navigation aids

Percival Pembroke, which entered service in 1953 for light transport and communications and was withdrawn only in 1988

Hawker Siddeley Harrier GR.3

If the size of the Lincoln was the first of the aircraft to blow my mind, the Armstrong Whitworth Argosy is seriously humongous.  It is impossible to convey its scale, with its twin tails and its enormous wing span. It entered service in 1962 and could carry up to 69 troops or 13,000kg of equipment including armoured vehicles. It is two storeys tall from ground level to the cockpit.  The lens on my camera couldn’t fit anything like the whole thing in, and gives no sense of what this aircraft actually looks like, so see the image below the one in the museum of one of these crazy-looking things in flight.

Armstrong Whitworth Argosy

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Armstrong Whitworth AW660 Argosy C1 XP445 in RAF Near East markings from the BAE Systems website.

 

Rolls Royce RB211 22C engine used in the Lockheed Tristar, and the Boeing 747 and 767. Compare with the size of the edge of the doorway immediately to its right. Huge!

Vickers VC10 C1K long range transport

Final Comments

My father in typically mellow mode after he chose the RAF for his National Service, looking awfully youthful.

Anyone who visits will take something different away from Cosford, depending on their interests and their personal connections with aircraft.  We left the UK when I was a child, returning in late 1979, and part of my experience of living overseas was flying to and from Britain to visit family, first as an “unaccompanied minor” and then on my own, making it a routine form of travel.  Once, flying from Heathrow to Liverpool with my father in a propeller plane, he warned me about coming in to land and the noise and vibration that I, having only flown in jets, would probably find startling.  I did, but what fun! Years later, in a passenger plane taxiing down a Heathrow runway, the captain told those of us on the right side of the plane to look out of the window to see a Harrier jump-jet do a vertical take-off.  Fantastic.  Twenty or so years ago I saw a Vulcan flying at the Farnborough Air Show and have never forgotten it, and at the same show saw a vast commercial passenger plane being put through extraordinarily acrobatic paces, and that too remains in my mind as a very different but remarkable sight.  Two years ago I was at RAF Duxford with my father, and was lucky enough to be there just as a whole series of vintage biplanes were taxiing down the field and taking to the sky. Magical.  Aircraft do have their own special sorts of aura, some darker and some brighter than others.

The aircraft at Cosford are beautifully displayed, and while you can just stand and admire the sheer magnificence of these astonishing beasts, the signage is all thoroughly educational without in any way talking down to the visitor.  The sheer amount of information delivered in a digestible way is genuinely impressive.

Visiting

The museum is free of charge, but parking is charged (at the time of writing) at £7.50.  You can check for updates on charges and opening times on the museum’s website here.  The museum hosts a number of events throughout the year, including an air show and corporate events, so do make sure that the entire museum is open on the day you want to go, and that none of the hangars are closed for any reason.

The car park is huge, and payment of the set fee is via machines that are dotted around.  There is a really nice cafe in the reception area, which offers drinks, snacks and lunches, and everything is bright, clean and modern.  You will need to stop at what looks like a ticket stand to confirm that you have paid for parking, and so that you can be counted, because the museum’s funding depends on the volume of footfall.

The museum’s shop is in the third hangar, with some fun stuff for sale, but you can buy a souvenir guide in the reception area.  I did buy this, with some considerable doubt in my mind because anything that refers to itself as a souvenir doesn’t inspire confidence, but this 73-page booklet, full of great photos and information, was really enjoyable and when I arrived home I read it cover to cover.  Just like the museum itself, this mixes stories of planes and people, and the result is admirable.

The museum recommends that you allow four hours to get around all four hangars, including walking around the outside aeroplanes.  Not being an expert, and not stopping to listen to the many audio recordings or watch the video displays, I did it in a leisurely two and a half hours, stopping to read a lot of the excellent signage and to take photographs.  I took an additional half hour afterwards to consume a heavenly coffee and a bite to eat.  So for me, including my snack break, it was a three hour visit, which I enjoyed phenomenally.

Lockheed Hurcules C Mk 3P medium-range tactical transport aircraft that could operate from short runways.

If it looks like rain take a brolly or a raincoat with a hood, because you will have to walk from the reception area outside to the first hangar, and there are aeroplanes to see in the grounds as well.  The first two hangars, 2 and 3, are physically linked, but it is easy to miss that there are doors letting you through.  From there, it is a matter of going outside again, into Hangar 4, and again across a small access road into Hangar 1.  If you want a coffee or something to eat afterwards, it’s few minutes to walk back to the reception area via another two outdoor planes.

There is disabled access throughout, including H3’s viewing gallery, lower level and shop.  Signage is all at a level that can be read by wheelchair users.

Museum Ground Crew

Only one of the aircraft, at least on my three visits, allows visitor access, and this was a guided tour for a fee at restricted times, so experiencing the planes is a matter of viewing either from the floor or, in the third hangar, from both floor level and via a viewing gallery.

If you don’t want to be inundated with children, avoid weekends and school holidays.  School trips mean that they are not completely avoidable, but you stand half a chance.

Every time I have been there, especially last month (October) when I turned up at opening time, there were volunteers everywhere who are there to offer knowledge and help you with any visiting information.  They are a hugely knowledgeable and friendly bunch.

If you have even a marginal interest in aircraft or the history of technology, this makes for a very rewarding day out.

Hawker Cygnet, 1924-29

 

Ewloe Castle in Wepre Park, near Connah’s Quay

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Artist’s reconstruction of Ewloe Castle. Source: Renn and Avent 2001

The ruins of the 13th century Ewloe Castle, one of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s more puzzling constructions, is located in the public Wepre Park, near Connah’s Quay and not far from Chester.

Visiting details are at the end of the post, including information about car parking, the visitor centre, an excellent downloadable guide to the routes through the park and its key features, as well as where to find out more information about the castle.
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Wepre Park

Wepre Park map in the Explore Wepre Park PDF by Denbigh County Council online.  The Main Trail leads from the car park all the way to the foot of Eweloe Castle.  The Boardwalk is also reached from the car park, and is shown at bottom left.

Wepre Park is a woodland valley, largely deciduous, that flanks the Wepre Brook, and is very popular with dog walkers, joggers, and families. According to the park’s literature, it is a remnant of the great hunting forest of Ewloe.  More recently it was the site of Wepre Hall.  On a sunny day in the autumn, with the light filtering through the trees, this should be a wonderful display of illuminated colour.  The autumnal display was very fine, with the light filtering through the multi-coloured leaves and the woodland floors carpeted with bright yellows and oranges.  The woodland contains a wide mixture of different trees, shrubs and vegetation and is home to varied wildlife, including aquatic species, insects, birds, bats, badgers and a lot of very busy squirrels.  There is also a small wildlife meadow, although there is not much to see at this time of year.
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The valley was owned in the 11th century by St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester.  In the mid 12th century it was the site of a major confrontation between Henry II and the forces of Owain ap Gruffydd, ruler of Gwynedd in west Wales, during Owain’s campaign to extend his territories to the east. In 1157 Henry II took an army into northeast Wales to subdue Owain, but was ambushed by Owain in the Ewloe valley.  Although Henry escaped, and defeated Owain at Rhuddlan, Owain later regained much of the lost territory.

Wepre Hall, first built in 1788. Source: RCHAMW

A house is recorded at the site from at least the late Middle Ages.  During the Civil War a house at Wepre belonged to Royalist supporters who, in 1645, supposedly hid in the cellars a Royalist sympathiser who was a participant in the the Battle of Rowton Moor.  It was rebuilt as a 2-storey Georgian house in 1788 by Edward Jones, the owner of a local lead mine, with outbuildings and later extensions.  It was demolished in 1960.  There is nothing remaining of Wepre Hall except for the cellars.  The visitor centre sits on part of the Wepre Hall site, and the gardens here and nearby are designed to echo the formal gardens of the Hall.

There are a number of routes through the park.  From the car park, the Main Trail is a wide metalled track that leads from the car park past the visitor centre nearly as far as the castle (after which there are wooden steps leading up to the castle).  It follows the line of the brook, which drifts in and out of sight and is constantly audible.  The most notable feature on the Main Trail, apart from the lovely woodland, are the outcrops of Hollin Rock, a 320 million year old red sandstone, popular as a building material.  Towards the end of the trail is a small and attractive bridge, Pont Aber, that was once located further upstream but was moved here in 1800 to improve access to Wepre Hall.  There is a delightful small waterfall on the other side, which used to be the location of the Castle Hill Brewery that used the water from a natural spring.
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The second significant route is a boardwalk, which leads from the car park along the brook and connects to the Main Trail about half way way along.  The main feature of the Boardwalk route is the waterfall, actually built as a weir to power a small hydroelectric plant, but it is a very attractive feature.  The plant used to provide electricity to the Hall before mains electricity arrived in the area in 1925.  There is a variety of aquatic vegetation flanking the boardwalk, and information boards indicate the different wildlife, including birds, that can be spotted on a walk.  The boardwalk follows the brook closely until it slopes up slightly to meet the Main Trail, and the “bubbling brook” phrase never seemed more apt.  This is a very audio-visual walk.
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Some of the other footpaths are just well-worn tracks, very muddy at this time of year, but follow lovely winding routes through the woodland.  I tried the track from the bridge to the Devil’s Basin, supposed to be a short set of very pretty falls, but after five minutes or so the deeply churned mud made it completely impassable in ordinary hiking boots. It would have required wellies.

Near the visitor centre there is a small lake called the Rosie Pool that was created in the late 19th century for fishing and is now managed by the local angling club.  Immediately behind the visitor centre is a small but very attractive formal garden with a small pond, a nod to the former hall.  Even at this time of year, fuchsia, hydrangea and sedum still have some flowers.  There is a small pet cemetery located at its edge.  For more about the park download the Explore Wepre Park guide (in Sources at the end of this post).

Ewloe Castle

Ewloe Castle from the air. RCHAMW 6463845. Source: RCHAMW

There is some discussion about who built the castle. It was certainly either built or rebuilt in c.1257 by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (also known as Llywelyn the Last), but he may have been restoring a castle originally built by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great).  The D-shaped keep has been seen as characteristic of Llywelyn the Great, and differences in the stonework of the upper and lower wards have been used to argue for a two-phase construction.  If this was indeed the case, it is argued that the upper ward would have been contemporary with the keep built by Llywelyn the Great and the lower ward built by his grandson Llywelyn the Last.  On the other hand, there is an early 14th century document that states that the entire was built by Llywelyn the Last.  The question remains unresolved, but it is not doubted that whoever built the castle, Llywelyn the Last certainly carried out extensive building work here.

Plan of the castle. Source: Lloyd 1928

Although it is built to a fairly standard Welsh plan, it is something of an oddity in strategic terms, not being built high on a hill but on the edge of a small valley.  Although the sides slope steeply away from the castle on three sides, it was actually overlooked from the south, so required quite extensive outer defences on that side, consisting of a ditch, the digging out of which would have provided a bank.
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The keep sits within a small upper ward.  A larger lower ward was added, possibly at a later date, with a tower at its furthest extent from the upper ward and both were provided with curtain walls, some of which remain.  The D-shaped (or apsidal) keep has a small footprint with its semi-circular end overlooking the defences, whilst the tower in the lower keep overlooks both the southern aspect and the valley below.  The lower ward would have been provided with timber buildings for domestic functions and storage.

On the former ground floor of the keep, to which the steps at the back of the upper ward lead, the former hearth is still visible, and there are windows set in the thick walls.  Looking at the keep today, the lowest layer was a basement with no lighting.  The keep had an outer stone staircase at its south, and this is still in use for accessing the inner staircase that leads up inside the walls of the keep to a viewing platform at the top of what remains of the keep’s walls.

Two entrances, one into the upper ward and one into the lower ward would have been approached by bridges over the defences.  The lower ward’s tower was probably accessed from the curtain walls of the lower ward.

In 1257, when the castle was either built or rebuilt, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was on the offensive, attempting to retake Perfeddwlad, otherwise known as the “Four Cantrefs,” which incorporated the cantrefs of Rhos, Rhufoniog, Dyffryn Clwyd and Tegeingl, a constant bone of contention between the Welsh princes and the English crown.

The problem of the poor strategic location could be explained by suggesting a different intention for the castle as more of a political statement than a fully functional military outpost.  Its location on the edges of disputed territory, not far from older English castles and the site of Owain Gwynedd’s defeat of Henry II may simply have been a statement of a Welsh return to land that they claimed as their own, and a useful staging point for any future negotiations, given its proximity to the Anglo-Welsh border.  This is supported by its probable use first in November 1259 and again in December 1260 when English ambassadors were sent to meet with Llywelyn at a place identified as Wepre, which must have been the castle.  There is no record of the castle’s involvement in 1276 and 1277, when war between England and Wales reignited, which may give added weight to this castle being a political gesture rather than a strictly military base, but could also reflect the necessity of Welsh retreat to safer ground.

Ewloe Castle by Moses Griffith (1747-1819) NMW A13529. Source: National Museum of Wales

Edward I does not appear to have felt that Ewloe Castle was worthy of his interest.  Although he restored other castles for his own use, this was probably too small, too badly sited and too difficult to defend.  Instead, in 1277 Edward began to build at Flint (posted about on the blog here), Rhuddlan (posted about here) and Denbigh (posted about here).  Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion in 1400 found no use for it either.
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Visiting

Access to the castle, managed by Cadw, is free of charge and open all year round, as is the entire park, but you will need to be confident with stairs, as they are the only way in and out of the castle.  There are new metal stair cases with handrails, and original stone ones, including a small flight in a stairwell in the keep leading up to a viewing platform at the top.  None of the stone staircases have handrails.

Parking is straight forward for both castle and park.  If you only want to see the castle there is a lay-by on the side of the B5125 that looks as though it will take about 8 cars, maybe a couple more.  I didn’t try the route from there to the castle so have no idea what the footpath is like underfoot, but the What3Words address for the lay-by parking is ///follow.beauty.mistaking.  The official car park is a large one near the visitor centre on Wepre Drive. Ewloe Castle is about a mile away from this car park along a very easy and attractive trail. The What3Words address is for the main car park is  ///contrived.writing.mailers

A circular walk taking in the boardwalk and returning to the car park via the Main Trail would be suitable for unwilling legs, as would a walk along the boardwalk to the bridge and then back along the main route.  The castle is not suitable for those who cannot manage steps and stairs, as this is the only way of getting into the castle, from whatever direction you approach.

The visitor centre is closed at this time of year (November) but its cafe was open on my visit.  The public toilets are also open nearby.  There’s a substantial play area on the edge of the car park.  There are a small number of good information boards throughout the park, including one at the castle, but the Cadw official guide to Flint Castle also has a section on Ewloe Castle.  Other sources are listed below, including castle information and an excellent guide to the park, together with a footpath map.


Sources:

Wepre Park

Flintshire County Council
Parks and Countryside
https://www.flintshire.gov.uk/en/LeisureAndTourism/Countryside-and-Coast/Parks-and-countryside.aspx
Discover Wepre Park Booklet
https://www.flintshire.gov.uk/en/PDFFiles/Countryside–Coast/Discover-Wepre-EnglishWEB.pdf

A different map that may be slightly easier to follow is on the following link:
Potty Adventures
Wepre Park
https://pottyadventures.wordpress.com/2016/07/16/wepre-park-our-local-8th-wonder-of-world/

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Ewloe Castle

Books and papers

Davis, Paul R. 2021.  Towers of Defiance.  The Castles and Fortifications of the Princes of Wales. Y Lolfa

Lloyd, J.E. 1928.  Ewloe.  Y Cymmrodor, vol.39 (unnumbered)

Renn, D.F. and Avent, R. 2001 (2nd edition). Flint Castle – Ewloe Castle. Cadw

Websites

BBC News
13th century castle to be sold (18th November 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/8364611.stm

Cadw
Castell Ewloe
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/castell-ewloe

Coflein
Ewloe Castle
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/94447/
Wepre Hall
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/36307/

Wales Online
Ewloe Castle has sold to farmer at auction (9th December 2009)
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/local-news/ewloe-castle-sold-farmer-auction-2770922
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Day Trip: Wroxeter Roman City, near Shrewsbury

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Hypocaust in the foreground with, in the background, the wall known as the Old Work, making one side of the former basilica.

Founded in the mid-1st century AD next to the point of the river Severn where it could be forded, Wroxeter (Viriconium) was built on land farmed by the Iron Age Cornovii.  It became a legionary fortress with the capacity to hold 5500 men in the 50s, becoming an urban centre towards the end of the 1st century, eventually becoming Britain’s fourth largest town, four times larger than the the legionary fortress.  The remains of the site lie in a rural landscape to the east of Shrewsbury and is managed by Historic England.  There is an imaginary reconstruction of a Roman villa.  Indoors there is a very nicely presented Visitor Centre with exhibits and displays, as well as a small shop.  Visiting details are at the end of this post.

Display in the Visitor Centre

There is little point repeating everything that the fact-filled guide book has to say about Wroxeter and its history, so this is just a short summary of what you can expect to see on a visit.

What remains of the site is a very small section of the original 192 acre (78 hectare) city, consisting of the lowest courses and foundations of the bath-house, part of a market-place and a row of column bases that marks one site of the forum.  The road that carries visitors into the town follows the line of the Roman road, Watling Street.  The city was surrounded by a 3-mile long circuit of ditches and banks originally topped with a timber palisade, now on farm land and not accessible to the public, but still visible on aerial photographs.

Information board in the Visitor Centre at Wroxeter

Unlike Chester, York, London and many other Roman urban developments that survived the departure of Rome, Viriconium was one of the Roman towns that were completely abandoned, beginning in the mid-3rd century.  Looking out over the surrounding fields towards the Wrekin, after which Viriconium may have been named, it is difficult to imagine a thriving urban mass of public and private buildings connected by a maze of roadways and alleys. A series of archaeological excavations, however, have provided insights into what used to be here, and the visitor centre and guide book do a good job of explaining it.

The town was divided by the mighty Watling Street that connected it to London in the south, and to Whitchurch to the north, where the road forked with one branch going to Chester and the other towards the northeast, York and beyond.

Artistic reconstruction of the basilica on an outdoor information board

The most conspicuous feature of the site is the single piece of surviving wall, known as the Old Work, shown at the top of this post, which is what remains of what was one of the walls of the basilica, which was shared with the rest of the bath-house.  The big opening in the wall marks where there were once double doors.  The layers of brick-like stone blocks and tile work were covered in pink plaster, some of which would have been painted with decorative scenes.

Information board showing the main architectural features at the site with the basilica shaded in blue, the shops and marketplace side by side in the foreground and the bath-house taking up the rest of the space.

Changing rooms at the end of the basilica

The bath-house, which has been excavated in its entirety, is the most complete part of the site, with remains of one wall, sections of the the hypocaust (raised heated floor) and the footprint of the baths’ basilica, giving a clear indication of the scale of the original complex.  Bath-houses were an important part of Roman life, a component of civilized living and a good place to socialize and network. Even the small industrial base at Prestatyn had a tiny bath-house (posted about here).  The Roman visitor to a big bath complex would usually begin in the basilica, a long thin space flanked by columns, where exercise and sports could be carried out in the central area, whilst the side aisles could have been used for personal care activities like massages and hair dressing.  At the end of the basilica were two changing rooms.

The outdoor plunge pool

Then bathers moved through the baths in a sequence from an outdoor cold water plunge pool (heaven help them in this climate!) to an indoor cold water pool (natatio), an unheated room (frigidarium), a  warm room (tepidarium), and a number of both wet and dry hot rooms (an alveus, caldarium, and sudatorium).  Heat was provided in the warm and hot rooms via a hypocaust, consisting of regularly placed pillars of tiles that once supported a raised floor about 1 metre high, through which hot air was directed from three furnaces.  Hollow box-like flue tiles were used to capture the hot air as it rose from below.  A piece of decorated ceiling plaster from the hot room has been reconstructed, and copies are kept in both the Visitor Centre and the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

Hot room

Reconstruction of ceiling plaster of the frigidarium in the Visitor Centre

Part of the western extension of the baths

Water from the baths was drained away beneath the bath-house and was used to flush out the latrines, the lower courses of which survive.

One of the shops that fronted onto Watling Street

Although the rest of the remains today lack the impact of the basilica wall section, mainly consisting of no more than two or three courses of stonework, these too were important parts of the civic quarter of the city, and there are explanatory information boards all over the site that explain what you are looking at and showing helpful artists’ reconstructions of how buildings may have been experienced by the Roman inhabitants.

Part of an information board showing the market place used by wealthy residents

Next to the bath-house is what remains of a market hall, with two storeys surrounding a central courtyard, containing shops that sold high quality food goods to the wealthy.  This building survived into the fifth century AD.  Nearby were other shops with open fronts overlooking Watling Street, which may have included food and drink for those using the baths, like modern take-away outlets or bars.

One of the ground floor shops in the marketplace

Colonnade of the forum, facing Watling Street

Over the road there is a line of column bases that are the remains of what must have been a very impressive forum, which was once covered 2.5 acres (1 hectare) and measured 80m x 120m (262 x 393ft).  This consisted of covered buildings arranged in a square around an open courtyard. The buildings served administrative, legal and mercantile functions, and the ruins represent a colonnade that faced onto Watling Street.  The central area was for an open market where stalls could be rented by local traders.

The reconstructed Roman house, a simplified version of excavated building “Site 6,” had a shop facing onto the street with accommodation at the rear.   It was built in 2010 for a television programme and provides a good way of visualizing what Watling Street and other areas of Viriconium may have looked like.

The forum

The reconstructed Roman house

A room in the villa

Next to the house, but not open to the public, is the model farm built in the mid 19th century by Lord Barnard, and incorporates considerable amounts of Roman stonework in its construction.  The farm is no longer in use but is maintained by Historic England.

The visitor centre and the lavishly illustrated guide book provide an excellent overview of the entire city’s history and what was found in archaeological excavations, with more information provided in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

Visiting

Prices and opening times can be found on the English Heritage website here.  There is plenty of parking.  The visit begins at the visitor centre, where tickets are purchased and you are given the option of taking an audio guide. I didn’t take one, but plenty of people were using them.  There is a small shop where you can purchase a detailed guide book, and although it is impractical to read this as you go around the site, there is a site plan and an aerial photograph with all key features marked, both of which great to have as you walk around.  The Visitor Centre is small but excellent, with plenty of helpful information boards and attractive displays of objects found at the site.  There is no cafe but there is a picnic area with a few benches.

1st century harness mount showing Bacchus

The site itself is mostly on the flat, with pathways between all the main buildings and information boards explaining what you are looking at.  There was a coach-load of children there at the time I visited and it is clear that for children, the villa was easier to get to grips with than the ruins themselves.

Nearby is St Andrew’s Church, which I very annoyingly missed but is widely recommended with some attractive and unusual features, some dating back to the Norman period. Both the church and the model farm, the latter not open to the public, are described in English Heritage’s Wroxeter guide book.

St Bartholemew’s, Tong

If you are driving via the A41, both Lilleshall Abbey and Tong’s St Bartholemew’s Church are well worth the visit.  Tong is right on the A41, very convenient for a visit en route.

Near to Wroxeter is the 18th century National Trust Attingham Park property. Shrewsbury is not far, and has a really excellent museum and art gallery with a super Roman gallery with finds from Wroxeter. Shrewsbury itself is a lovely and apparently thriving town with a good mixture of architectural styles from the Medieval period onwards, including the vast church of the former Shrewsbury Abbey, some lovely half-timbered buildings and some fine Georgian architecture, as well as some great places to find lunch!

Sources

White, Roger H. 2023. Wroxeter Roman City. English Heritage (also includes St Andrew’s Church, the Victorian model farm and the reconstructed house)

Information displayed in the Wroxeter Visitor Centre

Information displayed in the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery (Roman gallery)

Discovering Shropshire’s History (website)
Roman Shropshire – (AD 43 – AD 410)
http://www.shropshirehistory.org.uk/html/search/verb/GetRecord/theme:20061122101531

 

A walk from Waverton towards Chester along the Shropshire Union Canal

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I have driven over the canal bridge on Eggbridge Lane in Waverton so many times thinking that I really must take advantage of the little car park just before the bridge to go and take a stroll down the towpath.  Having woken up early on a sunny morning I decided to investigate. Waverton is just off the A41, so very easy to reach. The car park is quite small, but it was not full even on a bright and warm morning.  The What3Words address for the car park is ///fingertip.snored.deals

Victoria Mill, Waverton

Immediately opposite the car park, as you walk to the towpath, is a very attractive canal building, the Grade 2 listed, a mid-19th century Victoria Mill, a former steam-powered canal-side corn mill, with bays for loading and unloading narrowboats, and now converted for modern use. The Historic England description is here.  This is part of the heritage of the Shropshire Union Canal, which if you keep walking north eventually ends up at Ellesmere Port.  To the south, it eventually connects up with the rest of the main canal network at Hurleston Junction.  The Shropshire Union has quite a complicated history, as does Chester’s canal heritage as a whole, and was not completed until 1835.

As with most canal walks, there’s always a choice to turn right or left, and as I had no idea what to expect from either direction I decided to head north, leaving the walk south for another occasion. Out of the car park I turned left under the unprepossessing bridge no.119 and headed up the towpath.  This section is metalled, so it avoided the mud and sludge that I had been half expecting.

If you take this route you find yourself walking along a short row of houses with canal gardens along a metalled pathway.  Canal-side gardens are always fascinating.  I used to live on a narrow boat many years ago, and it is always a lot of fun to see how different minds have dealt with a garden that opens directly on to a canal.  These are always hugely individualistic and personal.  There is always much to see in the way of garden furniture, garden ornaments (someone will always have gnomes, and there is usually at least one example of traditional canal painting), sheds in various states of repair, a wide range of summer houses, varieties of approaches to terracing, often some very interesting specimen trees and shrubs, and different attitudes to garden seclusion, along a spectrum from solid barriers of hedging or fencing to a complete lack of interest in any form of privacy.  A real cultural treat.

After just a minute or so the towpath enters a more rural section, and in the late season sun it was a real pleasure to take in all the autumnal colours on trees and shrubs that flank the canal.  I’ve posted some of the photos below. It’s a well-used section of towpath, with joggers, cyclists and plenty of dog walkers, but everyone is very civilized about moving over to make passing easy.  There was not much in the way of canal traffic, with just two narrowboats on the move, but I expect that it is much busier in summer.

Keep an eye out on your left as you leave the housing on your right and reach the more rural section.  Partly concealed by the grass next to the towpath, there is a short inscribed red sandstone Parish Boundary Marker. This section of the canal passes through the parish of Rowton, famous for the Civil War Battle of Rowton Heath (see the Wikipedia entry on the subject and a more detailed analysis by Historic England).  King Charles I is said to have watched his army lose that battle from the Phoenix Tower that still stands on Chester’s city walls. The stone marks the boundary between the parishes of Christleton (CP on the stone) and Rowton (RT).  The date commemorates the date of the battle in 1645 and, below the level of the grass, 1995, the 250th anniversary of the battle.
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After this more countrified section there are more houses, all interesting, with some lovely weeping willows and other water-loving species, and a very attractive hump-backed bridge, that I have since discovered carries Rowton Bridge Road into Christleton.  I walked up as far as The Cheshire Cat, which sensibly has a gate onto the towpath, and carried on just a short way beyond it, but at that point the canal converges closely with the A41 (Whitchurch Road) and it becomes quite a noisy experience with the unremitting traffic, especially during the week.

Checking the map later (for example see the plotaroute.com website), I note that by coming off the towpath at Rowton Bridge it is possible to walk into the attractive village of Christleton, with its marvellous pond, and I would have done this had I realized.  Another time.  had to be somewhere else in the afternoon, so it was a short walk, probably an hour and a bit there and back at strolling pace, with pauses to let bicycles pass, and to take photographs.

For those with unwilling legs (see the blog’s Introduction for details about what this refers to), the towpath heading north from Waverton is metalled, but quite uneven.  No problem for most people, I would have thought but do keep an eye on it.  There are places where the edges of the surface are particularly uneven, but this just means that if you are with someone else you need to go in single file for short sections.  Otherwise, it’s on the flat and very enjoyable.

On the way back I followed the towpath beyond the car park for a few minutes to see how far the housing that backs onto the canal extended.  This part of the towpath is not metalled, was muddy and is single-track.  These houses and gardens are another interesting mixture – each of the sections of housing and gardens has its own personality, presumably reflecting both when it was built and the pricing.  These look as though the garden-canal margins were all designed with narrowboats or other canal vessels in mind. There was indeed one narrowboat moored up at a garden.  The housing stops after a couple of minutes and the towpath reverts to a far more rural appearance.  I’ll investigate further on another day.

Exhibition in Chester Cathedral: “Trena Cox: Reflections 100”

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Introduction

The new exhibition at Chester Cathedral, Trena Cox: Reflections 100, which is on until the 8th November 2024, a scarily short window of opportunity for visitors, has pulled out all the stops to create a really imaginative  and absorbing examination of stained glass artist Trena Cox and an exploration of her legacy in more recent art works.

First, it was a new opportunity to learn more about an important local stained glass artist, a woman engaged in a form of art-craft that was usually the preserve of men.  She is, for example, one of only two female stained glass artists represented in the cathedral, and she has nine windows, one large (the St Christopher window in the slype shown below) and eight small ones in the cloisters (four of which are shown further down).
To appeal to different preferences for experiencing exhibitions, there are downloadable audio guides, online information sources via QR codes and real-world interactive screens, as well as beautifully designed and displayed posters and original works of art employing diverse materials in multiple styles.

Detail of Emily Lawler’s “Flock of Five Geese.” The entire composition, referencing the story of St Werburgh and her miracle, is shown below.

Second, it was terrific to see how the four different parts of the exhibition explored different aspects of Trena Cox’s legacy, because this is as much about the art and ideas that Trena inspired as it is about her own work.  In addition to  well known artists in different types of medium, the pre-exhibition project headed out into the community to involved different groups, including school children.  The sheer diversity of responses to Trena’s work is remarkable, many of them picking up not on the main themes of her work, but on the tiny details that make her work unique.

Third, it was fascinating to discover how the entire cathedral was employed in displaying the works on display, drawing visitors into different areas of the cathedral to experience new ideas in a medieval context.  The abbey has small, intimate spaces as well as large lofty ones, and the trail makes good use of the architecture.  By using the entire cathedral space, the art works could be separated, giving each one the opportunity to create its own impact.

The St Christopher window following restoration. Photograph by Helen Anderson (and copyright Helen Anderson)

Next, it was splendid to experience at first hand how beautifully the St Christopher window has been restored by Recclesia.  I attended a Chester Archaeological Society visit, lead by Artist in Residence Aleta Doran who is also the exhibition’s curator, and although thought it was stunning then, it has since been restored and it was fabulous to see not only how it has been repaired and restored, but how new details have been revealed.  This can be seen in the window itself, but is also the subject of a splendid video in the cloister that captures the work carried out.

Finally, I was with artist Helen Anderson, and we were given an informal tour of the exhibition by its curator, Artist in Residence Aleta Doran, who is always a joy for her knowledge and enthusiasm, which provided us with a terrific insight into how the entire exhibition came into being, a real learning curve into what it takes to pull together an exhibition that has so many aspects to it.  A real logistical tour de force, as well as a visual treat.
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Finding your way

The exhibition is grouped into four different sections, each exploring a different aspect of Trena’s legacy.  As you enter the cloisters from the reception area (free of charge at this time of year), there is an information board that points you to the left, but pause to investigate as it also has QR codes, one of which is a map of the route that you can download to your phone, another an audio guide that relates to the numbered posters and exhibits.

Don’t forget to pick up the booklet, the cover of which is shown at the top of the post, from the reception area.  There is some very useful information about the exhibition, its contributors and its partners and sponsors, as well as QR codes to more information online.

Learning about Trena Cox

The first part of the exhibition introduces the visitor to Trena Cox (1895-1980) using, depending on whether you downloaded the audio introduction, either posters or a combination of posters and Aleta’s audio tour.   The posters are beautifully designed, framed in slender black frames that emulate the leaded frames of stained glass, showing photographs of Trena Cox glass from many locations, accompanied by isolated motifs taken from her glass works. The only known photograph of her was taken when she was a young teenager and shows a direct gaze and a certain fearlessness.

Born on the Wirral, Trena Cox trained at the Laird School of Art in Birkenhead, receiving a traditional introduction to a broad range of techniques and skills before switching to stained glass. There are over 150 stained glass pieces known, but others may remain to be found.  Working mainly in the Cheshire and northeast Wales areas, her works are, however, in other areas, and most of them are in churches.  Trena’s story, which has sometimes been a challenge for Aleta to discover, emerges from both the posters and the audio track and demonstrates not only Trena’s talent but her willingness to modify her style to suit the times.

Trena Cox windows showing King Henry II on the right looking somewhat balefully toward Thomas Becket on the left

Trena Cox’s cathedral windows are an important part of the the exhibition and the route takes you first to those in the cloister (the walkway around the garden).  The cloister was windowless until the arrival at the cathedral of Dean Frank Bennett, whose energy and enthusiasm created the stained glass sensation that we see today.  Eight of Trena’s windows are small lights each side of a corner, in each case two above and two below.  My favourites are the paired Henry II and Thomas Becket of Canterbury.  There are other connections to St Thomas Becket within the cathedral, but what I particularly like about these two windows is the way that Henry looks out of his window towards Becket in his window, recreating something of the narrative of this impossibly difficult relationship, which resulted in the martyrdom of Becket, and a period of political difficulty for Henry II.  You can almost hear Henry thinking “Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” (almost certainly apocryphal). There is a QR code on one of the information boards for finding out more about all of the cloister windows on the Chester Cathedral website.

Detail of the St Christopher window shown at the end of the post, with Trena Cox’s signature and the bee surrounded by a pattern made of her fingerprints.

The recent restoration and professional cleaning of the main Trena Cox window in the cathedral, the St Christopher window in the slype, has returned from Recclesia with a glowing, incandescent and luminescent quality that is quite extraordinary.  Whether or not this is your sort of aesthetic, this is an extraordinary piece with charming details full of symbolism.  Minutiae that were not previously visible are now bright and sharp, and the richness of the entire composition can now be appreciated as Trena Cox first designed it.  I particularly melted at how Trena’s fingerprints were incorporated into a pattern around the bee in the window.  It was also revealed that the lead was used to create texture and relief at certain points, with St Christopher’s remarkable hair not merely painted on, but highlighted with sections of lead.  There is an interactive display in the slype (corridor) next to the window which allows you to explore the imagery and symbolism of the window, which are extensive, and this really helps to open up the secondary stories.

Video showing the skilled work carried out on the St Christopher window by Recclesia Stained Glass

A video in the cloisters describes how the restoration work was carried out.  It shows footage of the team at work, including the absolutely nail-biting process of putting the window back into its arches after restoration.  Aleta says that it was just as bad watching it being taken out, but somehow the sense of being at the finishing line after all that hard work was horribly tense even on a video!  But of course these people are experts and everything was fine.  Microscope analysis of the stained glass shows how in one section of the glass, which had become damaged simply due to its age, the edges of some of the painted text had begun to deteriorate, so the restoration work was incredibly timely.

Trena Cox in today’s Community

One of the really creative parts of the exhibition, and an admirable requirement for a part of the funding for the exhibition, was that the local community should be given the opportunity to respond to Trena Cox’s stained glass art with art works of its own.  I knew about this when I visited the Trena Cox windows with the Chester Archaeological Society, lead by Aleta, but was not at all clear about how this part of the project would manifest itself.  What a super surprise to see the inventiveness and imagination produced by local community groups and schools!  Here are some examples:

St Werburgh’s and St Columba’s Primary School

Heritage Engagement Window. During the 2024 Chester Heritage Festival in June, children as young as two years old painted panels that were incorporated into this splendid leaded panel, all based on the St Christopher window

Detail of the above Heritage Engagement Window.

Jigsaw, a community artwork based on a Trena Cox window in St Werburgh’s Church, by 15 women of Chester

The Story of Stained Glass

The creation of stained glass is probably one of the most poorly understood areas of art, craft and design.  Although it is widespread, and not only in religious buildings, its history and the processes of manufacture and repair are something of a mystery for most of us.  The process of demystification has been very much assisted by an enormous but easily digested set of information boards that lead down one part of the cloister, charting the chronological history of the artistic and technical advances in stained glass development. It’s a real revelation and is beautifully written and designed.

Artistic responses to Trena Cox

In Our Hands by April Pebble Owens.

How current artists have responded to Trena Cox is one of the innovative aspects of the exhibition, not only helping to highlight some of the unique features of the original stained glass creations, but also inspiring and forging new creations.  These new works of art, some in glass, others in paint and fabric, others engraved, some in mosaic, some in print, certainly demonstrate a wide range of skills but more importantly showcase the diversity of creative and empathetic responses to Trena Cox’s enormous catalogue of artistic expression.  I have copied a few of these below, chosen simply to show some of the range of different ideas and interpretations that emerged.  In the exhibition accompanying labels explain some of the ideas behind these works, one of which is shown below.

Tamsin Abbot. The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb

Label explaining ideas behind the above panel by Tamsin Abbott. Each of the pieces on display in the exhibition is accompanied by a similar piece of explanatory text

By the River of Swirling Eddies by Linda Edwards, reminiscent of medieval bestiaries

Flock of Five Geese, by Emily Lawlor

Apertures, by Lindsey Kennedy

Birds Without Borders by Gillian Curry

Final Thoughts

Detail of the St Christopher window

The idea for the exhibition was born around four years ago.  Work has been concentrated in the last two years.  There are so many different aspects to it that there it is difficult to do justice to it, but as a celebration of Trena Cox, of stained glass, and of how communities as well as individual artists can respond to an artist’s output, this was a revelation.   Even more than the work of Trena Cox herself, I found the whole conceptualization of the exhibition with its multiple strands of knowledge transfer, and its outreach to the local community and other artists, truly engaging.

The exhibition works, and it works brilliantly.  This was demonstrated perhaps more than anything else by the two elderly ladies who walked around it, arm in arm, discussing in depth all the modern responses to Trena Cox’s work.  Neither knew much about art, but both were fully absorbed with the narrative of the exhibition, from Trena Cox herself to the evidence of her legacy.  Splendid.

Detail of the newly restored St Christopher Window

Find out more

Detail of the Heritage Engagement Window

There is a “Trena Cox:Reflections 100” symposium, which has been arranged to coincide with the exhibition, on 25th October 2024:

“Using the life and legacy of Trena Cox as the focal point, attendees will hear from a variety of respected speakers from across the stained glass, heritage conservation, and art sectors. This evening keynote will conclude the day, looking at the past and future of women in stained glass.”

You can find details for the symposium on the Chester Cathedral website at:
https://chestercathedral.com/events/event/21607

You can follow Aleta Doran on Twitter (@StargazingAleta), or via her blog at https://www.aletadoran.co.uk/. 

For those wishing to investigate further afield, Green Badge Guide Katie Crowther is leading a “Trena Cox:Reflections 100” walking tour of Chester on 3rd November to complement the exhibition:

This walk will be a chance to get out onto the streets of the city where Trena lived and worked from 1924 until her death in 1980. We’ll take a look at some of the buildings where her distinctive work can be seen today and learn more of their history.  Trena was a passionate advocate for the preservation of her adopted home’s history and heritage. Along the walk, we’ll consider several of the streetscapes that changed quite dramatically during Trena’s time in Chester.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trena-cox-reflections-100-chester-sunday-netwalk-tickets-1013497697897?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=wsa&aff=ebdsshwebmobile

The free booklet provided at the reception area also provides the following QR codes for those who want to find out more:

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Websites with more information:

Chester Cathedral
Trena Cox: Reflections 100
https://chestercathedral.com/events/event/15207

The Trena Cox Project
By Aleta Doran, ongoing
https://www.aletadoran.co.uk/thetrenacoxproject

Recclesia Ltd
https://recclesia.com/
https://recclesiastainedglass.co.uk/

Chester Archaeological Society
An Interview with Chester Cathedral Artist in Residence Aleta Doran. For CAS, by Andie Byrnes, 7th July 2024
https://chesterarchaeolsociety.blog/2024/07/07/an-interview-with-chester-cathedral-artist-in-residence-aleta-doran/
Chester Archaeological Society visit to Chester Cathedral with Aleta Doran to learn about stained glass artist Trena Cox. For CAS, by Andie Byrnes June 13th 2024
https://chesterarchaeolsociety.blog/2024/06/13/our-visit-to-chester-cathedral-with-aleta-doran-to-learn-about-stained-glass-artist-trena-cox/

Based In Churton
A roof boss in Chester Cathedral: The Murder of Thomas Becket
https://basedinchurton.co.uk/2023/07/14/a-ceiling-boss-in-chester-cathedral-the-murder-of-thomas-becket/

Rhuddlan Castle and the Statute of Wales

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Rhuddlan Castle from the air. Source: People’s Collection Wales.

The magnificent Rhuddlan Castle, and its predecessor Twthill motte-and-bailey castle (the latter now just a mound), are located just over 3 miles south of the point on the North Wales coast where the river Clwyd, which Edward I diverted to pass the foot of Rhuddlan, empties into the sea at Rhyl. Like all of Edward I’s newly built English castles in Wales, this has some features in common with its brethren, but is at the same time a unique entity, each with a highly distinctive, unmistakable appearance in its own right, building on previous creativity to create even more innovative defensive measures.

I visited Rhuddlan last week for the first time, taking spur-of-the-moment advantage of a cold but gloriously sunny morning to make the most of Rhuddlan’s striking looks and lovely location.  The castle is an impressive sight, particularly as it is bounded on its northeastern side by fairly dense village housing and one gets the sense of emerging abruptly from the bustling present into a peaceful and finely fossilized landscape of the past.

This is the third post in an occasional series about the history of Edward I’s earliest castles in northeast Wales.  The background history to Edward’s sudden launch into castle building in Wales from 1277 is the first part, and can be found here. It looks at the disputes between Edward I’s father Henry III, king of England, and his subsequent and far more personally felt disputes with Llywelyn ap Gruffud, Llywelyn the Last of Wales.  The second post in the series looked at Flint Castle, the first of Edward’s castles in Wales started in July 1277, with its accompanying new town.  Rhuddlan Castle was started in September 1277, and is covered below.  Denbigh built in 1282 is posted about here.

St Mary’s Rhuddlan

I combined Rhuddlan Castle with a look at the last surviving chunk of Edwardian defensive ditch that originally surrounded the town, and a wander around the exterior of the nearby St Mary’s Church (its opening times to visitors are limited to the summer months), which was built sometime after the granting of the town charter in 1278, both of which are mentioned below. I then skirted the castle and followed the track and footpath down to Twthill. The story of life at Rhuddlan before Edward I, both pre- and post-Norman, will be covered on another post, and will include the background to and history of Twthill.

St Asaph’s Cathedral

After Rhuddlan I drove the few miles south to visit St Asaph Cathedral, which has connections to both Rhuddlan Friary, originally located near the castle, and Valle Crucis Abbey, near Llangollen.  Valle Crucis is the subject of an ongoing series of posts on this blog.  Rhuddlan Friary has been discussed on the blog here, and St Asaph Cathedral will be discussed on a separate post at a later date.

To make it an official day-trip, the day not being warm enough for an ice cream, I stopped for a very self-indulgent glass in The Hare in Farndon on the way home, which was the cherry on top of a very good day!

Visitor information for Rhuddlan Castle is at the end of the post.

Rhuddlan during the reign of Henry III

Henry III (reigned 1216-1272), father of Edward I, had ongoing problems with self-styled Prince of Wales Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, also known as Llywelyn the Last, a grandson of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great).  Llywelyn was based in Gwynedd, his home territory, but had managed to establish some degree of unity within his own family (particularly his brothers Dafydd and Owain) and throughout Wales, historically a fragmented and constantly shifting set of territories.  The powerful Marcher lordships along the Welsh border formed an aggressive barrier between Wales and the rest of England, and trouble had rumbled continuously along the border during the reigns of previous kings, causing the official border between the two countries to move regularly.  The crown held territories within modern Wales, and these came under attack by Llywelyn the Last. This is all covered in the post that describes the background to the disputes between Edward and Llywellyn, complete with a family tree of the relevant participants.

A Dominican priory, described on the blog here, was founded by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1258 during the reign of Henry III, and is discussed.  The building does not survive, but some of its materials were visibly incorporated into the farm that now sits on the original site of the priory.  It is quite likely that during the 13th century played host to Llywelyn ap Grufudd, and later to both Henry III and Edward I during their visits.  As with most monastic institutions, the Dominicans were obliged to show hospitality to guests, irrespective of their political allegiance, and it would have been in their interests to stay in the good graces of both Welsh and English leaders.  Edward had probably taken advantage of hospitality at Basingwerk Abbey during the construction of Flint Castle.

Edward I’s Rhuddlan Castle

Expanding the the “Ring of Iron”

Map of Edward I’s campaigns in Wales. Source: History Matters at the University of Wales

Edward was granted the royal lands in Wales by Henry III on the occasion of his marriage to Eleanor of Castille, and took an active interest in the Welsh situation until his departure on crusade, during which his father died.  Edward inherited the dispute with Llywelyn, but was already very familiar with the the Welsh prince and his ambitions, and was also familiar with the Welsh landscape.  The expenses incurred during his crusade had left him with serious debts, and the terms of the agreement that Llywelyn had reached with Henry III involved a substantial annual payment by the Welsh prince to the Crown treasury, but there were problems.  Llywelyn was already three years in arrears, and was now refusing to pay homage to the new king.  Several treaties under Henry III had failed to achieve long term peace, and although the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 had looked as though it might hold, Llywelyn ap Gruffud’s behaviour was intolerable to Edward who labelled Llywelyn an outlaw in 1276, and war was declared in 1277. A peace was brokered, but although Edward had every reason to believe that the treaty might secure peace between England and Wales, he began to build a series of castles in northeast Wales, eventually extending into northwest Wales, beginning at Flint in the July of 1277 and rolling out along the coastlines throughout the next two decades.  This was followed almost immediately by the foundation of Rhuddlan in the same year.

Artist’s impression of the Twthill motte-and-bailey castle by Terry Ball.  All that survives today is the motte. Source: Wikipedia

When Edward started building his castle at Rhuddlan in September 1277, Flint Castle and town were still under construction.  Flint had been virgin territory, and consisted of both a stone castle and a new defended town, an “implanted bastide.”  Although the site of Edward’s castle itself had not been occupied, Rhuddlan had been long-established, from the pre-Conquest period into the 13th century.  The existing wooden Twthill motte-and-bailey castle, a short distance from Rhuddlan probably served as a useful base from which to manage building works and campaigns as the new stone castle was built and the new town laid out and provided with perimeter defences.

Llywelyn, realizing that his cause was lost, surrendered  later in 1277 at Rhuddlan, several years before Edward’s castle was finished, and for a while it looked as though the resulting Treaty of Aberconwy would provide the basis for long-term peace.  Llywelyn had been granted the entire region of what is now known as Gwynedd, permitted to retain the title Prince of Wales, and his difficult brother Dafyddd was allocated territories in mid-north Wales whilst Owain was given control of the Llŷn peninsula.   Edward, however, was not taking any chances, and he continued with his castle building programme, unambiguously reinforcing his message that Wales was under English control, with Rhuddlan performing the role as the administrative headquarters for the region.  Should any attempts at rebellion be attempted in the future, Edward and his supporters would be ready.

Why Rhuddlan?

What were the strategic advantages that made Edward I choose Rhuddlan as the location for his third castle, his new administrative headquarters for north Wales?

First, the castle is right on the edge of the River Clywd, a fairly narrow but very attractive ribbon of blue threading its way between the fields, all the more impressive when you know that the river actually ran along a slightly different course until Edward canalized it and had it dredged to provide a deep-water channel for connecting the castle to the coast and the Dee Estuary. The River Clywd become un-navigable not far south of Rhuddlan.  The link to the estuary connected Rhuddlan both to Flint Castle and Chester to its east and then, later, to Edward’s castles at Conwy and Caernarvon in the west.

Photograph of Rhuddlan Castle in the context of the River Clwyd floodplain and the coast to the north. Rhuddlan Castle is at bottom left, near the rear foot of the RCAHMW dragon logo.  Source: Coflein, archive number 6356180 / AP_2007_2032

The castle itself sits above a very wide, low floodplain, on an area of raised land.  Standing on the battlements, reached by modern spiral staircases, the views over the surrounding landscape are remarkable, providing an excellent impression of how well the castle was positioned for sighting oncoming threats.  Economically, the wide floodplain was ideal for the development of a new town, with potential for raising livestock and agriculture.

Until Conwy was built, Rhuddlan was conveniently located as a regional HQ just on the edge of Llywelyn’s territory, and it was his most important base in Wales.  By the time Conwy Castle was up and running, Rhuddlan had become secondary in importance, but was still garrisoned and was very important in Edward’s chain of defences.

The Designers and the Design

The outer curtain wall, which only survives in very small sections, followed the perimeter of the revetted dry moat, and enabled archers in the battlements of the castle to fire over the heads of those protecting the outer defences.

Rhuddlan has a very distinctive look and feel to it, containing some innovative features that were carried through to other castles in the northeast.  The first architect to work on Rhuddlan, who was probably responsible for its layout and some of its initial design elements, was king’s engineer Master Bertram, who had been employed by Henry III is Gascony, and who brought with him Gascon design principles.  He was replaced after six months by Master James of St George, whose work Edward had seen in France at the castle of St Georges d’Esperanche, and who went on to build Edward’s great castles at Conwy, Caernarvon, Harlech and Beaumaris.

The most obvious novel feature of the design, when compared to Flint, was the use of both an inner and a very short outer curtain wall, shown in the photograph above, a concentric arrangement of defences that formed the template for Edward’s later castles, including nearby Denbigh, built in 1282.  The lower outer curtain wall, which at Rhuddlan was installed along the inner perimeter of a revetted dry moat, itself impressively lined with stone, enabled archers on the battlements of the main castle to aim beyond those defending the outer curtain wall without endangering them, whilst providing two lines of defence for the castle and its defenders.

Nice to see part of the original gateway in this 19th century watercolour by David Cox. Source: Victoria and Albert Museum

Originally a formal gateway granted access across the moat and the short outer curtain wall into the riverside entrance between the first pair of distinctive twinned towers.  Diagonally across the inner ward a second pair of twinned towers gave access via a secondary entrance. On the other two corners of the main castle were another two towers, each single.  All the towers, including the river tower, were 4 storeys high, including a subterranean basement in each.

Building the castle

The first task was to build defensive ditches, which which would offer protection for the construction camp as the castle was built, and would later become the dry moat.  At Flint Castle 1800 ditchers, known as fossatores, were employed for thus task, as well as the digging of the ditch and banks for the town defences, and it is probable that a similar number was employed at Rhuddlan, sourced from all over England, some of whom were forced labour.  It is possible that a proportion of the fossatores who had been employed at Flint were now deployed at Rhuddlan.

As the castle began to take shape, skilled craftsmen were also imported, including carpenters and masons. Carpenters would have been vital for the build, as they were responsible for the scaffolding as well as various buildings in both inner and outer wards, and other architectural features.  Masons used a mixture of stone types for the construction, all available locally, including yellow and red sandstones, the latter more vulnerable to erosion over the centuries than the yellow, and the grey limestone.   Extensive robbing from the lower levels of the castle after it was slighted (damaged to prevent re-use) after the English Civil War in the 17th Century gives the impression of a serious attack of delamination, but as peculiar as it looks helpfully reveals the underlying construction, showing that the the more enduring limestone covered more vulnerable sandstones.

View of Rhuddlan from the west showing what it may have looked like by the beginning of the 14th century. Illustration by Terry Ball. Source: Taylor / Cadw 2004, p.3

In 1278 sufficient progress had been made for the king and queen to stay at the castle, and in 1280 the towers were roofed in lead and in 1281 the king’s hall was roofed with shingles.  A well was sunk into the centre of the inner ward, 50ft deep.

Whilst work on the castle proceeded, one of the most impressive of the civil engineering feats at Rhuddlan was completed simultaneously.  The river Clwyd was diverted from its natural course, and canalized for two miles (3.5km), the work of 968 workers who were imported to Rhuddlan for the task in 1277, providing the castle with deep channel access to the coast, suitable for sea-going vessels, avoiding the need for trans-shipping.  This met Edward’s requirement for a fluid and seamless communications network.

There was space by the riverside tower, known today as Gillot’s Tower, for a single vessel to put in to dock at high tide, and a river gate alongside the tower, improving efficiencies for loading and unloading.  As Rhuddlan always had a garrison, and was on a number of occasions the base from which forces departed towards Snowdonia, it was often provisioned from Ireland with livestock and grain.  A military cemetery was established at the castle, a clear indication that Edward was expecting casualties in his dealings with Wales.

Work was suspended during renewed hostilities in 1282, when Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd instigated another rebellion against Edward I.  Dafydd attacked Hawarden Castle on 21st March, Palm Sunday.  His action encouraged other Welsh landholders to retaliate in kind, but it was not until June that Llywelyn took the decision to join his brother’s rebellion.  Although the Welsh rebellion seemed to gain ground for a while, the English assembled a substantial force at Rhuddlan, consisting of around 9000 men, which advanced into Wales taking several Welsh castles as they proceeded.  The castle was re-provisioned by ship from Ireland with livestock and cereals.  This time there was no peace treaty, and Llywelyn was killed on the battle field in the same year, whilst Dafydd was eventually caught in June 1283 and held at Rhuddlan Castle before being put on trial in Shrewsbury for treason, after which he was tortured and executed.  The cost was massive, some £120,000 (£83,288,423.43 in today’s money, according to the National Archives Currency Converter) with £50,000 having been raised by a tax on English residents.  There was also a huge cost in terms of English life;  the military cemetery established at Rhuddlan had run out of space by October 1282.

Work had resumed on Rhuddlan following the conflict and although there are no records of damage to the castle at that time, records of repairs do survive and these suggest that Rhuddlan had come under attack.  A record survives for the payment of 64 shillings to “Adam the tailor” for red silk to make pennons and royal standards for Rhuddlan.  As if the massive castle itself was not a sufficient statement of English power in the region, it was to be adorned with the rich and brightly coloured symbols of English monarchy.

The 50ft / 15m well in the inner ward

Today it is difficult to conceive of a royal court that was constantly on the move, but in the Medieval period, royal authority was reinforced by the movement of the monarch to properties around his kingdom, both his own and those of favoured aristocrats.  After the execution of Dafydd, Edward took his court on a tour of various provincial areas, whilst work continued at Rhuddlan.  He was back at Rhuddlan for Christmas.  Between 1283 and 1286 further investment was made on the royal apartments and chapel, both of which would have been in the wooden buildings in the inner ward, together with the kitchens.  Beam holes in the walls of the castle’s interior show where the roof beams were installed.  A well was sunk in the centre of the inner ward.  The outer ward would also have been filled with buildings, of a more utilitarian variety, including at least one granary, a forge, stables and storage facilities.

Arnold Taylor quotes a figure of £9613 2s 8 3/4d for the building of Rhuddlan between 1277 and 1282.  According to the National Archives Currency Converter, this would be some £6,672,184.58 in today’s money (or 11,209 horses or 21,362 cows or 961,313 days of a skilled tradesman’s labour).

Edward’s new borough and town

Plan of Rhuddlan. Source: Arnold Taylor/Cadw 2004, p.9

As at Flint a new borough was created and provided with defences and English settlers were incentivized to live and work there.  The new town, known as an “implanted bastide” after prototypes in Gascony, was built to the northwest of the the old town and was granted its charter in 1278.  This new-town bastide concept and its management are discussed in more detail on the post about Flint Castle.  Today’s town follows the original layout of the new town, its streets originally dividing the town into five sections leading down to a bridge across the river, with the High Street, Church Street, Castle Street, Parliament Street and Gwindy street being the key survivors.

The town was defended on three sides by a ditch with flanking banks, possibly topped with a timber palisade, a section of which survives off Gwindy Street, shown in the illustration and photograph below.  In the 1960s the complete length of the ditch survived north of the town, but by 1970 only the Gwindy Street section remained. Excavation of part of the defences, known as Plot 0, was undertaken when the land was due to be sold for development, but due to the heavily eroded state of the banks was unable to confirm if there were timber defensive features.  The fourth side of the defences was made up by a cliff running down to the river.

Source: Quinnell and Blockley 1994

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What remains of the double banks and ditch that surrounded the new town of Rhuddlan

Although it might have seemed like an unattractive proposition to be an immigrant English population living in a defended town in ostensibly hostile territory, there was a huge demand for land in England at that time, and the new towns in Wales represented great opportunity as well as risk, particularly as charters offered far more favourable conditions for the English than their Welsh neighbours.  Marc Morris refers to them as “those enclaves of English privilege, where the Welsh were obliged to trade but could not live and where the legal discrimination between the two peoples was a fact of every day existence.”  The risk for these settlers was very real, and it was the towns rather than the castles that were targeted by Dafydd in 1282, in Aberystwyth, Denbigh and Rhuddlan.
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The Statute of Rhuddlan of March 1284

Peniarth MS 41 a 15th century copy of the Statute of Rhuddlan. Source: National Library of Wales, via Wikipedia

In 1284 Edward I formalized how Wales to was to be governed and ruled after the deaths of Llywelyn in 1282 and Dafydd in 1283 during Dafydd’s ill-conceived rebellion of 1282.  The document that captured his requirements was the Statute of Rhuddlan or Statue of Wales, which was issued by Edward I from Rhuddlan whilst he was in residence. Although Edward had been sufficiently diplomatic to recognize different interests and hierarchical claims within Wales after 1277 for the sake of peace, in 1282 his aim was to bring the entire of Wales into a single administrative system controlled by England.

The Statue of Rhuddlan, part territorial administration and part legal treatise, handled Wales as a single homogenous unit, an extension of England and her criminal legal system.  Wales was divided into new English-style shires:  Flint, Merioneth, Caernarvon, Anglesey, Cardigan and Carmarthen, a structure that endured until 1536 when the Act of Union was passed.  An English administrative hierarchy was put into place with officials and administrators answering to a new justiciar based in northwest Wales. Legally, the Statue was an interesting mixture of English law with some concessions to Welsh traditions.  Criminal law was English, but the Statute allowed for Welsh traditions of civil law to be maintained for matters like contracts, inheritance, land deals and debt handling.

Edward’s castle building continued unabated even as the statute was being written up in Rhuddlan, announced and enforced.  It is thought that it was at Rhuddlan that Edward declared that the title and role of prince of Wales would pass to his own son and to the future sons of English kings.  Edward’s first child, who became Edward II, was born at Caernarfon in April 1284, in the month following the statute, and was officially granted the title of Prince of Wales in 1301.   The title has been handed down from reigning monarch to eldest son ever since that date, most recently on the death of Queen Elizabeth II when, the former Prince of Wales, Charles, having acceded to the throne on 10th September 2022, the title passed to his eldest son, Prince William.

Rhuddlan Castle after Edward I

Rebellion of October 1294

Resentment in Wales continued to fester, and in October 1294 Madog ap Llywelyn, a relation of Llyweln the Great, and Morgan ap Maredudd, both important land owners in northwest Wales laid siege to Edward’s castles at Criccieth, Conwy and Harlech.  This followed particularly harsh taxes imposed by Edward, that discriminated against the Welsh, and also Edward’s demand for men to fight in Gascony.  Rhuddlan served as a jumping-off point for Edward’s response to this uprising in March 1295, but Conwy was by now at the heart of the action, and Edward’s new headquarters whilst Caernarfon Castle was still being built (and which was damaged during the attack).  By June 1295 the uprising had been put down and order was restored.

Owain Glyn Dŵr, 1400-c.1410

In 1400, during the reign of Henry IV, Owain Glyn Dŵr, having been declared Prince of Wales by a group of his followers met at Glyndyfrdwy, lead a new rebellion in response to harsh conditions imposed by the English crown, and Rhuddlan was one of the castles and towns that came under attack. Rhuddlan Castle held out against the assault, but the town itself was brutalized, and there are indications such as the failure to properly repair town defences that the borough never recovered.

The English Civil War, c.1642-51

In the Civil War of 1642-48, the castle was held by the king’s forces but although it initially held out, it was surrendered to the parliamentarian commander-in-chief Major-General Thomas Mytton, and a decision was made in the House of Commons to slight the castle (render it unusable), which was actioned in May 1648. This was the fate of several medieval castles that were employed during the Civil War.

Rhuddlan Castle in 18th and 19th century art

John Boydell (1720-1804). “A North West View of Rhuddlan Castle in Flintshire,” in 1749. Source: People’s Collection Wales

In my posts about Flint and Denbigh I had a look at some of the art works that were produced in the 18th and 19th centuries when medieval buildings with their air of romance and mystery found an enthusiastic audience amongst painters of all skill levels.  There are so many art works of Rhuddlan that it is almost impossible to pick and choose, so I have selected views that show different aspects of the castle, and have added a link at the end of Sources to some more examples.

John Boydell was a publisher, talented engraver and promoter of art, as well as doing a stint as Lord Mayor of London. His 1749 image above not only captures the castle but the attached village and the distinctive bridge and that captures something of village life, with men fishing, a barge pulled up at the river edge, and people approaching on horseback and foot.  The strongly featured bridge is typical of his work – in 1747 he published The Bridge Book, featuring six landscapes all of which showcased distinctive bridges.  He did a rather nice one of Denbigh Castle too.

From the 1781 edition of “A tour In Wales” by Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) Source: Wikipedia via the National Library of Wales

Thomas Pennant was born in Flintshire and is best known for his remarkable A Tour In Wales, which eventuallyran to eight illustrated volumes, capturing three journeys that he made in Wales between 1773 and 1776. The National Library of Wales says that one of his greates gifts was “his ability to foster friendships. His appreciation of people was very well-known and because of this he always received sensible and full answers to all his enquiries for information.”  He was a great collector, but his interest was always in the subject matter and the details captured, rather than particular artistic merit.  The painting of Rhuddlan below was in the 1781 edition, capturing something of the sense of the isolation of the castle in a wide landscape, a contrasting and more delicate approach to Boydell’s bright and lively image.

Rhuddlan Castle as captured by artist George Pickering (1794-1857) and engraved by George Hawkins the Younger (1819-1852). See the National Library of Wales catalogue for a bigger image in which details can be clearly seen.

A completely different approach was taken by lithographer George Pickering the Younger, who got up close and personal with the castle, sacrificing the general form of the castle in favour of picking out particular features.  He artist looks out over the river and the floodplain beyond, the sun low in the sky, with village buildings shown in the background, including St Mary’s Church.  The ivy clinging to the towers is also shown on Peter Ghent’s painting below.  Cattle are shown grazing on the foreshore, a small sailing vessel is pulled up on the other side of the bridge, and there are other visitors inspecting the site.

Rhuddlan Castle c.1885 by Peter Ghent (1857–1911). Williamson Art Gallery and Museum.  Source: ArtUK

The oil on canvas painting of Rhuddlan Castle by Peter Ghent, now at the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum in Birkenhead, is a rather more impressionistic view of the castle, showing the ivy and the surrounding trees, and cattle cooling themselves in the river.   The riverside tower is not shown, although part of the river wall is shown.  The russet and green palette is characteristic of Ghent’s work.  Ghent was born in Birkenhead and attended Birkenhead School of Art.  He moved to Conwy, which he used as a base for exploring Welsh landscapes in both oil and watercolour.
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Rhuddlan Castle Today

The castle was given into state care in 1944 and conservation work began in 1947.  It was transferred from the Department of the Environment to the newly created Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, in 1984.  It is beautifully cared for, without a single blade of grass out of place.  The ivy that once ran riot over its walls has been completely eliminated which given how invasive ivy is was a considerable task.  The castle continues to undergo conservation work as needed to prevent deterioration and to ensure that it remains safe.

The castle was deliberately slighted (i.e. partly demolished) at the end of the English Civil War in the 16th century so that it could not be reused in any future offensives, which accounts for its ruined state. This does not impede an understanding of the castle and its features, many of which remain.  Some of the damage is more recent.  The lower courses of stone have been extensively robbed since the 16th century for local construction projects, revealing the inner filling of the walls, and leaving it looking very denuded and rather peculiar at its ground floor level, but allowing the inner construction of the thick walls to be seen.

Although there are no floors left in the towers and inner walls, there are fireplaces and beam slots (the beams supporting the floors at each level) that show where each of the storeys was located.  Some of the fireplaces, like the one on the left, retain black burn marks, a really evocative link to the past.  Many of the fireplaces were quite huge and, given the diameter of the towers, must have provided substantial heat for the castle guardians and administrators who were based there even in the coldest Welsh winters, even if the space was a little cramped.

A number of modern excavations have been carried out at Rhuddlan, between 1973 and 1988 helping to clarify some details about the medieval history of Rhuddlan as well as information about earlier phases, particularly during the Norman and prehistoric periods (Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age, including some particularly fine lithics and decorated pebbles dating to the Mesolithic).  These are summarized by Quinnell and Blockley in their 1994 publication, which can be downloaded from the Archaeology Data Service website.

Excavated Areas in Rhuddlan between 1969 to 1973. Click to expand.  Source: Quinnell and Blockley 1994, p4

Excavated object from Rhuddlan. Source: Quinnell and Blockley 1994, p.184

 

St Mary’s Church, Rhuddlan

St Mary’s, only a five minute walk from the castle, was closed when I visited, so I am going to cover it on another post next summer when it re-opens to visitors, but it is certainly worth mentioning here, as it looks as though it is a splendid piece of later medieval heritage.  An earlier Norman church was built to the east of the castle, but St Mary’s was first built in 1284 and was enlarged in the 15th century.  It has undergone changes over the years, and perennial multi-tasker Sir George Gilbert Scott had a go at it during his restoration of St Asaph’s Cathedral in the 1900s, but by all accounts the restoration appears to have been quite sympathetic. The gilbertscott.org website reports that “Scott treated the old building gently, lowering the floor in the nave and raising it in the chancel, providing some new windows, seating, a vestry and rebuilding the south porch.  He also provided a vestry screen, pulpit, an eagle lectern, altar rail and chancel seats.”  However, Quinnell and Blockley say that the church contains much of the original 13th century architecture in the nave and chancel.  They add that fragments from two different crosses, found during the demolition of a wall near the Vicarage in 1936, are now kept in the church.  Both have inter-laced decoration and have been dated stylistically to the late 10th or early 11th centuries.

If you are there when it is open, it should be well worth visiting at the same time as a trip to the castle (unfortunately the St Mary’s website does not currently show the times when it is open to visitors, but there is an email address).  Even though it was closed, I very much enjoyed a walk around the building and a poke around the churchyard.  Gravestones and their symbolism are eternally fascinating and there are some very good examples of churchyard monuments.

Final Comments

Rhuddlan is visually stunning, and retains plenty of its newly innovated  features to capture interest, demonstrating significant improvements in medieval castle design.  The canalized river showcases both Edward’s obsession with good communication links and the civil engineering skills that were available to him.  As a visitor attraction it is beautifully maintained by Cadw, which is particularly noticeable when comparing it with earlier images of the castle covered in ivy.  Rhuddlan attracted a serious amount of artistic interest, providing views of how it looked in the 18th and 19th centuries and, at the same time, demonstrating the fascination that artists had for medieval ruins. This is a site that really rewards a visit, particularly on a bright sunny day, when the red and yellow sandstones absolutely glow against a blue sky.


Visiting Rhuddlan Castle

Map of the Rhuddlan town trail from the North East Wales website

Rhuddlan is operated by Cadw, and is subject to an entry fee.  Details of opening times and entry charges are on the Cadw website.  There is a free car park, which also has a map of the main features of the town and the route down to Twthill, just five minutes away from the castle.  Beyond Twthill, the footpath passes the Abbey Farm and caravan park, the site of the former Rhuddlan Friary, which is on private land and cannot be visited.

As usual with Cadw venues, there is not much information about the history of Rhuddlan on the Cadw website, but there are plenty of online resources and there is an excellent short (9-page) Cadw guide book available from the ticket office, or from online book retailers, with a 3-D reconstruction and a site plan, as well as a history of the site and a numbered tour of the key features, each with a descriptive paragraph explaining what you’re looking at – well worth the £2.50 that it cost me in the Rhuddlan Castle gift shop.  You are also given a site plan as part of the ticket price, with 7 features picked out and described briefly (bi-lingual English and Welsh).

My battered copy of the Cadw leaflet that is provided with your ticket, showing some of the key features of the castle.  The reverse side shows the same details in Welsh.

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The approach to the castle is on the flat, as is the interior and the walk around the castle, so this is suitable for those with unwilling legs.  As with Flint Castle, the towers are fitted with modern spiral staircases, which will probably not be suitable for unwilling legs, but there is plenty to see without scaling the heights, including excellent views over the floodplain.

The ticket office also has toilets and a small gift shop.  There are no coffee facilities but there is a freezer with ice-creams and a fridge with cold drinks, and there are some tables and chairs outside for a sit down.

It’s a seriously attractive site, and well worth a visit.

Sources

Books and papers

Davis, Paul R. 2021. Towers of Defiance.  The Castles of Fortifications of the Princes of Wales. Y Lolfa

Davies, John 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin

Dean, Josh and Catherine Jones 2020. Archaeological Watching Brief report for Plas Llewelyn, Rhuddlan. Project code: A0209.1, report no. 0203. Aeon Archaeology
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/92914

Morris, M. 2008. A Great and Terrible King. Edward I and the Forging of Britain. Penguin

Quinnell, Henrietta and Marion R. Blockley with Peter Berridge 1994.  Excavations at Rhuddlan, Clwyd 1969-73. Mesolithic to Medieval. CBA Research Report No 95 (1994)
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-281-1/dissemination/pdf/cba_rr_095.pdf

Rowley, T. 1986.  The High Middle Ages, 1200-1550.  Routledge and Kegan Paul

Shillaber, C. 1947. Edward I, Builder of Towns. Speculum, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jul., 1947), p.297-309
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2856866

Spencer, Dan 2018. The Castle At War in Medieval England and Wales. Amberley Publishing

Stevens, Matthew Frank 2019. The Economy of Medieval Wales 1067 – 1536. University of Wales Press

Taylor, Arnold. 2004.  Rhuddlan Castle.  Abridged from a text by Arnold Taylor. Cadw

Websites

Abbey Farm Caravan and Camping Park
History
https://abbeyfarmrhuddlan.co.uk/portfolio-item/history/#top

Balfour Beatty
Balvac repaired this 13th century castle in North Wales
https://www.balfourbeatty.com/what-we-do/projects/rhuddlan-castle/

Cadw
Rhuddlan Castle
https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/rhuddlan-castle
Rhuddlan, Norman Borough
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/303586

Coflein
Rhuddlan Castle
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/92914

Ecclesiastical and Heritage World
Rhuddlan Castle: Conservation of Castle River Dock
https://www.ecclesiasticalandheritageworld.co.uk/news/1038-rhuddlan-castle-conservation-of-castle-river-dock

Goldin Fine Art
John Boydell: The Enlightenment Man
https://www.goldinfineart.com/blogs/blog/john-boydell?srsltid=AfmBOop6p7_0_WrJ2Sx_WA4FEs0lZW09ZdoRzqo61Hc6WFokRC3aLG9h

National Library of Wales
A Tour In Wales. Thomas Pennant (eight digitized volumes)
https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/pictures/a-tour-in-wales

Sulis Fine Art
Peter Ghent RCA (1857-1911)
https://www.sulisfineart.com/peter-ghent-rca-1857-1911-late-19th-century-watercolour-cottage-by-a-stream-qo859.html

Rhuddlan Castle in Art

Meisterdrucke
Rhuddlan Castle and Marshes, 1898, unknown artist
https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/fine-art-prints/Unbekannt/785633/Rhuddlan-Castle-and-Marshes.html

ArtUK
Rhuddlan Castle by John Lawson 1868 – 1909. Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/rhuddlan-castle-84929

Darnely Fine Art
Rhuddlan Castle by Norman Wilkinson 1878-1971.
https://darnleyfineart.com/artwork/rhuddlan-castle/

Government Art Collection
Rhuddlan Castle by David Gentleman 1930 –
artcollection.dcms.gov.uk/artwork/17005/

Rhuddlan Castle in Art
Various examples – a good mix
https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/topics/rhuddlan+castle+in+art

The 1715 “Old Dock” – The earliest of Liverpool’s commercial docks, preserved beneath the Liverpool ONE shopping centre

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Introduction

The Eyes map of Liverpool showing Old Dock on a previous tidal inlet and enclosed within the streets of an expanding Liverpool in 1765, 50 years after it first opened. Later docks were laid out along the foreshore. Source: National Museums Liverpool

Earlier in summer 2024 I went on the Old Dock tour in Liverpool when it was offered one Sunday.   Old Dock, of which only one corner remains to be visited, was perhaps Liverpool’s most important commercial and civil engineering initiative at a time when Chester’s port was going into decline and Liverpool had the opportunity to become the trading centre for the northwest.

Old Dock, Liverpool

Old Dock in Liverpool, the first of Liverpool’s impressive network of enclosed docks, opened in 1715, to the design of civil engineer Thomas Steers.  It is Europe’s oldest enclosed cargo-handling dock.  What remains of Old Dock is underground, beneath the “Liverpool ONE” shopping centre.  Its lock gates can no longer be visited, but remain under The Strand (the modern dual carriageway that runs along the line of the old foreshore).  Only the northeastern corner of the dock is accessible to visitors, and has been provided with a gantry and information panels, and its history is presented to pre-booked groups by an excellent guide.  I’ve added details about booking and the tour itself at the end of the post under “Visiting.” The following looks at some of the history of Old Dock.

The 1699 Howland Great Wet Dock in London. British Library HMNTS 10349.ff.9.. Source: Wikipedia

Old Dock was modelled on the Howland Great Wet Dock, shown right, built in 1699, which was built to shelter ships, mainly of the East India Company, in the days when ships over-wintering on the Thames were regularly subjected to both storm damage and piracy.  It was surrounded by a double planting of trees to help protect the ships within and had shipbuilding dry docks at its entrance. It was a convenient place to carry out repairs and to ready ships for the upcoming season, but was not used for handling cargo so was not a commercial trading dock.  The Howland Great Wet Dock was built in a rural space on the south of the Thames in what is now the residential Surrey Quays area of southeast London, and was replaced in the 18th century by Greenland Dock, which itself became part of the Surrey Commercial Docks.

The commercial argument for Old Dock

Liverpool was established by a charter of King John in 1207 and was provided with a castle in 1235.  At this time, however, Chester was the main northwestern port, and Liverpool did not become a commercial giant until the 18th and 19th centuries, and this required some pioneering Victorian thinking and civil engineering before it really took off as one of Britain’s leading ports.  Old Dock is at the heart of this story.

Painting of Liverpool in 1680, from the Old Dock display area. Unknown artist. The original is held by the National Maritime Museum. See more (and a better image) on ArtUK

Before the docks, the Mersey was not the easiest of rivers to use in an age of sail partly due to strong winds but also because of the twice-daily tidal events that swept down the estuary. An additional problem was that due to the dumping of rubbish and ships’ ballast along the river edges, deep-sea shipping was unable to approach the river banks to offload and reload.  It could also become very busy with river traffic of all shapes and sizes. The handling of cargo on the Mersey was achieved by mooring ships in the main channel and loading and offloading them with lighters – unpowered boats into which the cargo was loaded by hand, then rowed to shore, and offloaded by hand.  This could only be carried out between tidal events, confining the activity to around 5 hours a day. To empty a single ship averaging 150 tons could take between two and three weeks.

The engineering success of the Howland dock enterprise inspired MP Thomas Johnson, who was both a successful merchant a slave trader, to approach one of the engineers probably responsible for the Howland dock, George Sorocold, to discuss the viability of a similar dock for Liverpool.  Johnson, however, saw the greater potential of an enclosed inland dock, not for over-wintering ships but for creating a cargo-handling facility to radically improve speed and efficiency. Under The Dock Act of 1708 a Common Council of leading city figures was established to became trustees of the proposed dock, which they operated through council committees.  The risk of doing it this way rather than as a private enterprise was that failure could have put the entire city finances in jeopardy.  Thomas Steers from London was the civil engineer appointed in 1709 to make this a reality, only a decade after the opening of the Howland Great Wet Quay on which he had probably also worked.  Initially costs had been estimated at £6000, but this was a serious underestimation and eventually the dock cost more than double this amount.

Building and opening the dock

The dock was lined with bricks in the upper sections with local red sandstone in the lower courses.  I am accustomed to the later Surrey Commercial Docks in southeast London, where I used to live, which are lined with stone much like Liverpool’s Albert Dock, so the sight of a brick-lined dock seemed extraordinary to me.  The bricks were made on site from local clays, with a dedicated kiln built for the task, and a special mortar was used to resist the incursion of water.

At the base of Old Dock, Liverpool

The result of all the investment, civil engineering and labour was Old Dock, which opened in 1715 at the mouth of a former tidal inlet or creek.  Up to a hundred ships could be taken into the 3.5 acre dock via a 30ft wide entrance lock and could draw up against the quayside to offload without the use of lighters. Because of the tides, ships could only enter the dock at the top half of the tide, but a 1.5 acre tidal entrance basin was provided as a waiting area.  By drawing ships up against the quayside, three weeks could be reduced to just one to two days.  The proof of concept was soon confirmed.

The area around the dock was soon surrounded by residential, commercial, retail and service industry premises. Excerpt from a poster from the Old Dock exhibition area.

An entire new residential, commercial, retail and service industry quarter grew up around the dock, which became known as the Merchants’ Quarter.  As well as homes, warehousing and other commercial facilities there were lodging houses for sailors, and less salubrious businesses that catered to their needs.  This is a good illustration of the sort of process of urban sprawl that follows on from a specific industrial development.

Old Dock was such a notable success that new docks were soon opened, and the Liverpool foreshore began its transformation.  During the 18th century South Dock, also built by Thomas Steers (later Salthouse Dock) opened 1753, George’s Dock opened 1771, King’s Dock opened and Queen’s Dock opened in 1796.  It is a measure of the success of the dock concept, Old Dock having been established 53 years before Bristol’s first dock, that between 1772 and 1805 the total tonnage of shipping increased from 170,000 to 670,000, with foreign shipping increasing from 20,000 to 280,000.  By the end of the 19th century 9% of all world trade passed through the Liverpool docks, and there were 120 acres of enclosed docks along 10km (7 miles) of Liverpool’s foreshore.

Closure of the dock

Old Dock, Liverpool

Old Dock itself closed in 1826 mainly because as ship sizes increased, in terms of width, length and depth, it became increasingly obsolete.  It did not help either that the dock had become surrounded with other buildings and could not easily expand without considerable destruction.  Instead, the development of docks beyond the existing foreshore seemed like a better option and this is what happened.

This new use of enclosed docks for cargo-handling was pioneered at Old Dock in Liverpool, creating the first revolution in cargo handling in the UK.  To provide additional real estate for the rapidly growing city, most of the dock was infilled and built over, so this one remaining corner is a significant survivor from Liverpool’s early development as a major trading port.

Final Comments

Old Dock brickwork

Much of what is known about Liverpool’s earliest docks comes from the archaeological investigations that took place between 1976 and 2009. Old Dock was examined prior to the building of Liverpool One by Oxford Archaeology between 2001 and 2006. The remains of Old Dock are designated a site of Outstanding Universal Value.

It is difficult to over-emphasize how important London’s Howland Great Wet Dock and Liverpool’s Old Dock were to the development of maritime trade in Britain.  With an enclosed dock designed by Thomas Steers, the Old Dock set Liverpool firmly on the path for trading success throughout the 18th century and the commercial and architectural triumphs of the Victorian period.

Visiting

Booking details, opening times, ticket prices and everything else you need to know are on the Old Dock Tour website.

At the time of writing the meeting point shown on one place on Google Maps is in a different location from the one that is shown on the Old Dock Tours website, and the latter is the correct one.  I don’t know Liverpool at all and I was confused by the directions on the website, partly because I had no idea what a “Q-Park” might be when it escaped from its burrow, so I arrived early to make sure that I was in the right place, which was on the Thomas Steers Way entrance to the “Q-Park” (the Liverpool ONE car-park), on the left as you head up from the Mersey, near the base of the Sugar House Steps.  Here’s the What3Words address for that location, which is traffic-free, but do check on the website or your ticket that this remains the same meeting place: https://what3words.com/found.farm.gent. Have your ticket handy to be checked, either printed out or on your device.

This is a guided tour.  You receive an excellent lecture as you walk to the dock via a wall-sized map of old Liverpool, and then stand on the  gantry looking down into the dock. Our guide was informative, humorous and engaging, parting with a staggering amount of information in an easily digestible way.  It is always a mark of how well a guide does when there are questions afterwards, people wanting to explore specific aspects of the story, and there were lots of questions.  I used to live overlooking Greenland Dock in London, and the remnants of the Surrey Commercial Docks were my home for twenty years.  Opposite was Canary Wharf, where the former East India and West India quays are preserved and the Museum of London Docklands is located. It was a real dock heritage experience, so it was particularly nice to go to Liverpool and have someone bring this particular old dock to such vivid life.

If you are dealing with unwilling legs, there is a flight of steps with a banister to hold onto.  I forgot to count, but I would guess perhaps ten steps, down from the car park entrance into the dock area.  There is then a gantry (metal walkway) across the remaining part of the dock, with high sides to hang on to.  There is nowhere to sit, so a portable perch of some sort might be useful whilst you are listening to the talks.

I had not realized that it was the schools’ half term break.  Half-term was a poor day to visit Liverpool, and on the tour there were two completely uncontrolled young children running around and yelling their heads off.  A less child-intensive day would be better if it can be arranged.  There’s not a lot for young children to see on this walk anyway, although an older child seemed to be enjoying it very much.
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Sources

Most of the above details came from the guided tour.  I did not want to detract from that so I have not gone into greater detail here, but I did use some additional sources to check facts that I had not noted down at the time, and have provided some suggestions for further reading.

Books and Papers

Farrer, William, and Brownbill, J. (eds.) 1911. Liverpool: The docks, in “A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4,” p. 41-43. British History Online. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1911.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp41-43

Gregory, Richard A., Caroline Raynor, Mark H. Adams, Robert Philpott, Christine Howard-Davis, Nick Johnson, Vix Hughes, David A. Higgins 2014. Archaeology at the Waterfront vol 1: Liverpool Docks. Lancaster Imprints / Oxford Archaeology North

Stammers, M.K. 2007.  Ships and port management at Liverpool before the opening of the first dock in 1715.  Journal of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol.56.
https://www.hslc.org.uk/journal/vol-156-2007/attachment/156-3-stammers/

Stephenson, Roderick A. 1955. The Liverpool Dock System.  Transactions of the Liverpool Nautical Research Society, Volume 8 1953-55 (1955)
https://liverpoolnauticalresearchsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Article-The-Liverpool-Dock-System.pdf

Websites

National Museums Liverpool
Ten fascinating facts about Liverpool’s Old Dock
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/ten-fascinating-facts-about-liverpools-old-dock

Historic Liverpool
1846: Plan of the Liverpool Docks, by Jesse Hartley, Dock Surveyor
https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/old-maps-of-liverpool/1846-plan-liverpool-docks-jesse-hartley-dock-surveyor/#4/65.79/-74.43

The Liverpolitan
Old Dock: a different view. Wednesday, 18 November 2015
https://theliverpolitan.com/blog_old_dock_a_different_view.php

That’s How The Light Gets In blog
Liverpool Old Dock: Down to the bedrock
https://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/liverpool-old-dock-down-to-the-bedrock/

Liverpool World Heritage
LIVERPOOL MARITIME MERCANTILE CITY WORLD HERITAGE SITE MANAGEMENT PLAN 2017 – 2024. Prepared by LOCUS Consulting Ltd. Liverpool City Council
www.liverpoolworldheritage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/pmd-486-liverpool-whs-management-plan-final-version-as-at-27-sep-2017.pdf

A Rotherhithe Blog
The Howland Great Wet Dock 1699-1807
http://russiadock.blogspot.com/2008/06/rotherhithe-heritage-2-howland-great.html

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