The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book online

immediate district.

Clay has been extensively worked in Buckley, where the Messrs. Hancock's
famous fire-brick is made. Mention may also be made of the white bricks
made by the Aston Hall Coal and Brick Company, which are in great favour
with builders on account of their powers of resisting the weather and of
retaining their colour. A clay, resembling _terra cotta_ when burnt, has
also been found on Saltney.

At Sandycroft, on the river bank, are the Ironworks belonging to Messrs.
Taylor, where mining and other machinery is made.

The present course of the River below Chester, is called the New Cut, and
was completed under Act of Parliament, in 1737, by the River Dee Company,
who have lately handed over their interest in the River to a newly formed
Conservancy Board. The River, which before wandered over a large tract,
was thus confined to the present channel, and a large reclamation of land
effected. In compensation for the loss of rights of pasturage, 200
pounds is paid yearly by the Company to Trustees for the benefit of the
Freeholders of the Manor of Hawarden; 50 pounds is also paid yearly for
the repair of the south bank. This was followed by the inclosure of
Saltney Marsh, in 1778.

Possessing as it does a greater depth of water over the bar than the
Mersey, and provided with ample railway communication with the great
industrial centres, it is probable that the Dee may ere long become a far
more important river as a vehicle of commerce than heretofore. Of still
more importance to Hawarden is the establishment of direct communication
with Liverpool already referred to, in place of the present circuitous
route by Chester and Runcorn. By the new Swing Railway Bridge across the
Dee, direct access will be given to Birkenhead and Liverpool by the
Mersey Tunnel across the Wirral; such communication will not only
stimulate and develop to the utmost the natural resources of the
district, but will offer residential facilities, beneficial, as it may be
hoped, alike to town and country.

{Map of Hawarden: p38.jpg}

PHILLIPSON AND GOLDER, PRINTERS, CHESTER.




Footnotes:


{8} He was buried at Shuldham, in Norfolk.

{9a} Pennant. Sir W. Stanley had rendered the most valuable service to
the King at the battle of Bosworth; yet, upon suspicion of his favouring
the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the King had him seized at his castle at
Holt and beheaded.

{9b} This may have been the house known as "The Manor," now occupied by
Mr. Bakewell Bower of the Manor Farm.

{10} See Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices.

{11a} The Letters Patent recite also the service rendered to the King by
the furnishing a sum of money sufficient for the maintenance of thirty
soldiers for three years in the Plantation of Ulster.

{11b} Henley Park was left to John Glynne, (son of the Chief Justice by
his second wife,) through whom it passed by marriage to Francis Tilney,
Esq.

{11c} We find Hugh Ravenscroft mentioned as Steward of the Lordships of
Hawarden and Mold, about the year 1440. Thomas Ravenscroft, father of
Honora, afterwards Lady Glynne, by his wife Honora Sneyd of Keel Hall,
Staffordshire, was a Member of Parliament, and died in 1698, aged 28.
There is a monument to him in Hawarden Church.

{12} Pennant learnt that the timber had been valued in 1665 at 5000
pounds and subsequently sold.

{13} Between 1830 and 1840 the Norman Archaeological Society visited the
sites of all the Castles of the Barons who had gone over to England with
William the Conqueror, and in none of them found any masonry older than
the second half of the eleventh century.

{14} _e.g._ Mr. G. T. Clark and Mr. J. H. Parker, from whom this account
is chiefly derived.

{16} The uncommon strength and tenacity of the ancient mortar used in
the Castle was especially conspicuous in the Keep prior to the recent
restorations. In one place an enormous mass of masonry remained
suspended without other support than its own coherence and adhesion. For
security this has now been underpinned.

{23a} In 1563 there were five bells. In 1740 they were sold and six new
ones purchased from Abel Rudhall of Gloucester, at a cost of 628 pounds.
They bear the following inscriptions, with the initials of the maker and
the date 1745 in each case:

No. 1. Peace and good neighbourhood.

,, 2. Prosperity to all our benefactors.

,, 3. Prosperity to this Parish.

,, 4. I to the Church the living call,
And to the grave do summon all.

,, 5. Geo Hope, Churchwarden.
Thos Fox, Sidesman.

,, 6. Abel Rudhall of Gloucester cast us all.

{23b} There is a curious carved oaken slab, 4ft high, surmounted by a
cross, which forms part of the present Reading Desk. On the cross is an
eagle, with a vine branch and grapes above, and with a scroll in his beak
inscribed, In Domino confido. The pillar was probably in commemoration
of a maiden daughter of Randolph Pool, Rector in 1537.

{24a} Its peculiarity consisted in its accommodating two officiating
clergymen simultaneously. The Clerk's Desk was, as usual, below.

{24b} This Chancel, called the Whitley Chancel, was restored and
decorated in 1885, by the munificence of H. Hurlbutt, Esq., of Dee
Cottage, from the designs of Mr. Frampton, and under the superintendence
of Mr. Douglas, Architect, Chester. The same gentleman erected the Lych
Gate at the North entrance to the Churchyard.

{27} From Tinkersdale Quarry.

{28a} Dante is one of the four authors to whom Mr. Gladstone attributes
the greatest _formative_ influence on his own mind; the other three being
Aristotle, Bishop Butler, and S. Augustine.

{28b} Sir S. Glynne was one of the highest authorities on English
Ecclesiology. He visited and described in a series of Note Books, which
are carefully preserved, nearly the whole of the old parish churches in
the country. His Notes of the Churches of Kent are published by Murray.
He died in 1874, at the age of 66. There is a good portrait of him by
Roden.

{29a} Eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Gladstone.

{29b} Sir John Glynne has recorded that only one tree was standing about
the place in 1730. This is supposed to be the large spreading oak
adjoining the Flower Garden.

{32a} This Church contains some noteworthy frescoes and other mural
decorations, the work of the Rev. John Troughton, sometime curate in
charge.

{32b} A wag is said to have scratched on the stump of a tree at Hawarden
the following couplet:

"No matter whether oak or birch -
They all go like the Irish Church."

{33a}
_Homer_. _Iliad_ xxili. 315

"By skill far more than strength the woodman fells
The sturdy oak."
_Ld. Derby's Translation_

{34} 1889-1890.

{35a} Buckley Church, towards which a grant of 4000 pounds was made by
the Commissioners for Church building, was designed by Mr. John Gates of
Halifax, and holds 740 persons. The first stone was laid by the youthful
hands of Sir S. R. Glynne and his Brother Henry, afterwards Rector, and
the Consecration was performed nine months afterwards, by the Bishop of
Chester, Dr. Gardiner, Prebendary of Lichfield, preaching the Sermon. The
Schools and Parsonage had been previously erected by the exertions of the
Hon. and Rev. George Neville Grenville (afterwards Dean of Windsor), at a
cost of about 2000 pounds.

{35b} Much improved by the recent addition of a Chancel, the gift of W.
Johnson, Esq., of Broughton Hall.

{35c} Built by Sir S. R. Glynne: Vicarage and Schools by Lady Glynne.

{36} In the Journals of the House of Commons occurs the following entry,
dated 23rd February, 1646: - "An Ordinance from the Lords for Mr. Bold, a
Minister, to be instituted into the Church of Hawarden, in Flintshire."

{37} On the 1st October, 1770, assembled a grand Procession, with
coloured cockades, to start the opening of a Level, designed to be driven
one mile and three quarters in length and eighty yards deep "in order"
(so the notice ran) "to lay dry a body of coal for future ages." The
wages were to be, for boys and lads employed about the horses, and
windlasses - 26 in number, 6d. a day, smiths, carpenters and labourers,
above ground generally - 42 in number, 1/4 a day,
underground laboures 42, Cutters 68 in number, 1/6 a day, underground
stewards 10 in number, 1/6 a day.

At this date the price of coal at the pit's mouth was not less than 16/-
a ton, or fully double what it is at present. The course of this notable
work which effectually drained the Hollin seam of coal may still be
traced for a long distance by its succession of ventilating shafts,
finally issuing in the ravine called Kearsley, and discharging its waters
into the brook.



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