Many people have heard of John Wilkinson, Brymbo’s foremost industrialist. Some might also have heard of Henry Robertson, the Scottish engineer who took over the faltering ironworks in the nineteenth century and put it on a firmer commercial footing. Less often mentioned is another man with a long-lasting link to the local industries – and to the first credible plan for a Channel Tunnel, a plan that came extremely close to being carried out some 120 years ago. This was the mining and civil engineer William Low, who worked in Brymbo for many years.

Although some sources describe Low as Welsh or even English, he was in fact Scottish, and was born in Rothesay on Bute, a windy island in the Firth of Clyde, on 11th December 1814. He trained in Glasgow, and was apprenticed to Peter MacQuisten. Later he came south of the border to work under Brunel, and for the earlier part of his career specialised in railway engineering: like fellow Scot Henry Robertson, Low made his name on the back of the 1840s Railway Mania. By around 1847, however, he had settled in Wrexham, and turned his attention to collieries.

By the 1850s, if not immediately, Low was involved with the pit at Vron, in the township of Brymbo, and was living close by. Not much information seems to be available about Vron’s development, but it is supposed – following a remark by industrial historian George Lerry – to have been sunk in 1806 or thereabouts, initially working the shallower seams known as the Drowsell (at 47 yards depth) and Powell Coal. However, an 1888 reference in the Wrexham Advertiser speaks of Vron as then having been worked for “50 years”, so an 1840 origin is more likely. A brief and possibly garbled newspaper report of an 1844 accident states that the colliery was then owned by a “Mr. Moulson”. The full identity of this man is shown by a later bankruptcy notice, which states that George Edward Moulson, formerly of Hope Street and Summerhill and now of Gresford, had been the manager and superintendent of the Vron Colliery until 21st September 1850. (Moulson, who came from Liverpool, seems to have been no stranger to bankruptcy, as he also crops up in the 1830s in this context in partnership with two other merchants).

Low’s takeover, he was to recall some 21 years later, took place on the 29th September following Moulson’s departure. Low took on the pit in partnership with another engineer, Arthur H. Maurice. (Maurice, a member of the same Maurice family who were involved with the Nercwys colliery, later went to Staffordshire, and either he or a relative invented a safety apparatus to detect firedamp). During  Low’s time, Vron was built up into one of the bigger collieries in Brymbo township and as the 19th century wore on a terrace of miners’ houses, two pubs and a chapel, Vron Offa, would appear on the hill just north of the Vron farm, along with the high, greyish hump of a spoil heap: it was still there until about twenty years ago, steaming alarmingly on wet days.

Like most collieries of the time Vron was an terrifyingly dangerous working environment by modern standards. Along with many of the area’s mines it was much affected by gas, and there were periodic accidents and fires. Peter Higson Esq, reporting on mine inspections during 1859, described attending a fire at Vron which had “raged with increasing fury for three days” out of the upcast shaft, smoke and fumes shooting some 30 yards out of it. The manager – perhaps Low – was away, but with Higson’s help it was eventually brought under control.

Despite the difficulties of mining, Low found time to combine his interests in railways and tunnelling into something a little more radical. In fact, he wasn’t the only forward-thinking engineer to gain experience underground at Vron: Isaac Shone, later to invent a revolutionary sewer system, started his career there in the same period. Low’s ideas, however, went far beyond mining or public health. By the 1860s he had become a fervent advocate of the development of a cross-Channel tunnel linking England and France.

Although such proposals had been made before, Low’s were perhaps the first to be entirely achievable using proven technology of the time. Amongst the improvements Low had instigated at Vron was a system for improving ventilation, using heated pipes circling a section of one of the shafts. The problems associated with mine ventilation got Low thinking about the Channel crossing and how such a long tunnel might be ventilated. Following a similar principle to that employed in mining, he developed a solution using twin tunnel bores, each with a railway track, connected by cross-shafts – a approach remarkably similar, in outline, to that used today. Low’s ambitions had been further spurred by an 1867 audience that he gained with the Emperor Napoleon III. At the Paris Exposition of the same year, plans drawn up by Thome de Gamond, who for many years had been investigating the feasibility of a tunnel, were exhibited, and Low secured a personal introduction to him. The two men joined forces, later pooling their expertise with the distinguished engineers James Brunlees and John Hawkshaw. Even Wrexham’s Town Council were drawn into the general enthusiasm, giving their official support to Low, who had become a prominent figure in the town’s society.

Although an attempt in the 1870s had to be abandoned due to flooding, a further tunnel was started in 1880 under the direction of the South Eastern Railway’s flamboyant chairman, Sir Edward Watkin. This was, again, based ultimately on Low’s plans, Hawkshaw by this time having lost enthusiasm, and was scheduled to be completed by 1886. Well over 1000 yards of this tunnel were driven – by Welsh miners, of course – until the Government, fearful of the possibility of it being used by an invading French army, began to bring legal pressure to bear upon Watkin to halt work. Although for a period Watkin continued to send workmen into the tunnel whenever he thought the Government wouldn’t notice, this project too would grind to a final halt when a successful legal mechanism to stop it was discovered (much of the tunnel remains underneath Dover, the walls apparently still bearing the creatively-spelt inscription “This tunnel was begubnugn in 1880 William Sharp“).

By this time, Low himself had passed away: the Vron colliery company, never the most financially successful of the area’s pits, had declared itself bankrupt in 1882, and Low had retired to London, where he was to die in 1886. His colliery was later reopened and sunk down to the Main coal: in 1893, the Colliery Guardian reported that the ‘take’ of Vron included the last of the old Brymbo Main coal, on which the area’s reputation for high quality housecoal had been founded, which had elsewhere been worked out. In later years Vron had a bad reputation amongst miners; its seams were well under 3 ft high, and necessitated crawling on hands and knees. It closed for the last time in the 1930s, and little remains above ground these days. However, Low is still commemorated in Wrexham by the Argyll Street archway, built by him in the 1870s – as well as by the present Channel Tunnel, which finally made his engineering vision a reality well over a century after he first developed it.