You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Architecture’ category.
The landscape of Uwchmynydd Ucha. Photograph by D Quinn from Geograph
The land across the Nant y Ffrith valley is an outlier of the sombre moorland ‘wastes’ into which the top end of Brymbo extends, and for much of the period would have been the same kind of landscape: agriculturally poor, though without the coal outcrops or lead veins that enriched Minera, Bersham and Brymbo townships. The area was called Uwchmynydd or Uwch y mynydd, the ‘higher’ or ‘upper’ mountain, and was included in Hope parish. It was far from an empty space on the map though, and had its own, albeit small, community. Indeed while the residents of Uwchmynydd might have paid their rates into a different pot to those of Brymbo, and conducted their marriages and baptisms at a different church, the social connections between the two were quite intimate. In the late 17th century, the depositions in the court action fought over the will of Griffith Thomas of Brymbo demonstrate the shared ancestry, gossip, and economic activity of the inhabitants of the townships. William ffennah, butcher, and Edward ap John ap Rees, husbandman, both of Uwchmynydd, give evidence and another Uwchmynydd man, John Williams, was also present at the signing of the will.
The 1829 sale catalogue of the Brymbo estate is a fascinating document, especially so given that relatively few other good records of the Hall and its grounds survive, and that there is no archaeological evidence left. Several of the features recorded on it are very helpful in rounding out the evidence of the maps, deeds, one or two pictures, and various court cases which remain. Among these features is a reference to a “cold bath” which demands further investigation, perhaps hinting at an elaborate garden design.
The relatively brief vogue among the 18th-century upper classes for cold, outdoor bathing gave rise to a distinctive architecture, explored in an interesting article by Dr Clare Hickman. Bath-houses, spring-fed pools and pseudo-rustic grottoes provided a congenial environment for the gentry of the time to pant and splash around in ice-cold water, while surrounding gardens allowed space for a leisurely stroll beforehand, as recommended by fashionable physicians. Even Denbighshire grandee Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet, Hickman notes, had a cold bath built at Wynnstay. While Brymbo, several hundred feet up on its windy, damp hill, might not seem an ideal spot for outdoor bathing (even for those hoping to toughen themselves into Spartan healthiness) records suggest that one of the house’s owners had, at some point, had the same idea as Sir Watkin.
The demolition of John Griffith’s 1624 house at Brymbo. (Copyright NWN Media; used under their licence; downloading or commercial reproduction prohibited).
Many of the gentry houses of Britain failed to survive the 20th century. Even the old mansions of Wales, often very different buildings to those attached to the large estates of England, proved in many cases to be just too impractical or expensive to maintain.
Arms of the Gruffydd or Griffith family of Brymbo. From J. Y. W. Lloyd, “The History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher, And the Ancient Nobility of Powys Fadog”
Most townships or manors were the home of at least one wealthy or influential family, whose estate would form the core landholding of the area. For several centuries up until the early 1700s, this position was filled in Brymbo by a family called Griffith. Although not in later years among the great or most powerful landowners of Denbighshire, their position in the gentry brought certain rights and responsibilities, and like others of their kind their names often appear in local administrative records. When John Norden surveyed the manor of Esclusham in 1620, John and Robert Griffith headed up the manorial ‘jury’, a mixture of minor gentry, freeholders and prosperous yeomen.
Part of the family’s remaining prestige came from their history: the Griffith pedigree is often recited in the manuscripts of the 16th and 17th century Welsh genealogists. In common with other gentry, the Griffith family once kept a “card”, or detailed genealogical table, in their library: the scholar Robert Vaughan’s book of pedigrees, the Llyfr Achau Robert Vaughan or Peniarth MS. 287, lists “Gruff. of Brymbo his card” amongst its sources. Their claimed ancestor, Sanddef Hardd (“Alexander the Handsome”), was a twelfth-century member of a noble family from Bodafon, in the north of Anglesey. As related in this usefully detailed page, he may have followed the common path of hiring out his military skills, possibly during the “Anarchy” of the 1140s, the period of strife in England between the supporters of King Stephen and Matilda. Sanddef’s mercenary service was to pay off – handsomely. He was rewarded with land in Burton near present-day Gresford, and several of the landowners of the Wrexham area traced descent from him, including the later owners of the Brymbo estate.
History has not recorded the exact process by which Sanddef’s fifteenth-century descendant Edward ap Morgan came into ownership of this windy corner of rural Denbighshire, but by that time it seems clear that the family owned a substantial amount of land in the township. It is possible that a marriage (recorded in Harleian MS. 2299, compiled by the herald Hugh Thomas) between Edward’s grandfather Dafydd ap Madog and Mallt, the daughter of Dio ap Dafydd ap Madog Ddu of Brymbo bought the estate into his hands. Edward’s marriage to another local heiress, Margaret Whitford of Plas-y-Bold, would have added to the family possessions.1 The heralds and antiquarians also gave them Sanddef’s coat of arms: a gold lion rampant on a green field sown with sprigs of broom, a plant whose bright yellow flowers still cover the roadsides around Brymbo in late spring. It grows along the footpath running north-east from the old Brymbo road at Penrhos to the brow of the hill where the Griffith house once stood, from where you can see the whole of the eastern and northern part of the estate beneath you, along with a view over five counties.
East elevation of house at Plas Mostyn, Brymbo. Crown copyright: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales; used with permission
The building shown on the right was once the largest house in Brymbo. This is Plas Mostyn, built sometime in the early 17th century and pictured in a state of dereliction after the Second World War – probably on a bright, windy summer morning, judging by the photograph. Although there is still a farm of the same name, the house itself was demolished not long after this photograph was taken and today there is a cowshed on the site.
Nobody seems to have been able to establish exactly who built Plas Mostyn, which stood on a hilltop in the south of the township. It was a fine double-pile house of three stories, built from narrow slabs of shale stone: originally there were four chimneys, one at each corner of the building. The earliest record of the house and its estate was uncovered by Alfred Palmer, who said that though he was unable to trace it in Norden’s 1620 survey, found it had been sold by a William Santhey to William Mostyn sometime around 1640: it was soon to become known as Plas Mostyn (“Mostyn’s Hall”, more or less). This name still appears on today’s maps.
The history of the township of Brymbo 