Coedpoeth
Coedpoeth is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The built-up area with Minera had a population of 5,723 in the 2011 census.
Locality
Coedpoeth is on a hill between the Clywedog and Gwenfro valleys, surrounded by countryside with views of the Cheshire plain, Tanyfron, Southsea and the city of Wrexham.The highest point of the village is Rock Place at 800 feet above sea-level. The neighbouring village of Bwlchgwyn is one of several claiming to be the highest village in Wales, at 1090 feet.
The area is prone to snowfall, and has suffered localised flooding in recent years due to heavy rain. Welsh Water significantly invested in new drainage for the village in 2012, alleviating this problem.
History
The etymology of the placename is from Welsh coed "wood" with poeth meaning, in its original sense, "burnt", although the modern Welsh word translates as "hot". The name therefore translates roughly as "burnt wood", perhaps referring to the charcoal burning heritage in the village and local woods.In its early history the area known as Coedpoeth was not a settlement, but was described as a "waste" – an uncultivated area – and later as a "common", presumably a wood with rights of common, in the upper part of the township of Bersham. By the early 19th century this common fell within Minera, and under the Inclosures Act for the township of Minera in July 1809, the 'common called Coed Poeth' was subdivided into 11 parcels of land. Even as recently as 1832, the village of Coedpoeth did not yet exist as it currently does, and was instead four small hamlets. The Nant to the south possessed two mills on the River Clywedog: Adwy'r Clawdd to the north-east was named after a gap in Offa's Dyke. The Talwrn in the valley of the River Gwenfro to the north, was home to several small-scale coal mines, and the name of the Smelt, to the west, referred to smelting of lead in the area. These four hamlets became areas of Coedpoeth which grew, with increasing industrial development, around the inns and market hall on the ridge that became the high street of the village. The changes in population were reflected by a new church opening in 1875, with a replacement stone-built church, dedicated to St. Tudfil, being opened in 1895 as a chapel of ease within the ecclesiastical parish of Minera. By the 1860s, the village was named Coed Poeth, and this form of the name remained until the 1940s at the latest. The majority of 18th to early 20th century buildings in the village are constructed from local sandstone quarried at Penygelli quarries, with later examples being built with Ruabon red brick.
In civil administrative terms, Coedpoeth remained within the civil parish of Bersham. Later reorganisations, notably the 1974 changes subsequent to the Local Government Act 1972, saw Coedpoeth included in its own local government community, with Bersham village placed in the community of Esclusham. A traditionally Welsh-speaking village, the use of Welsh has declined rapidly in the last two decades.
Traditional methods of employment included the areas many coal mines, lead mining and smelting at Minera Lead Mines and the Smelt, and quarrying, in the nearby Penygelli, Berwig, and Minera quarries, all served directly by local railways. The late 20th century saw a decline in the area's traditional industries, and all have now disappeared. Today Coedpoeth is a dormitory village for commuters to Wrexham, and a point of sale for goods used by local farms and hamlets. There are still many small businesses in the village centre along the high street; but these small shops face fierce competition from large chain stores in Wrexham.
Lead and coal mining
The village was surrounded by natural resources such as lime, iron ore, coal, and lead, and many ruins show the industrial past of the area. The earliest industry was lead smelting and an area of the village named "The Smelt" contains street names referencing the industry.Coal mining in Coedpoeth is documented from the early 15th century. Limited and shallow extraction took place throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, especially for the local iron industry. Examples include Earl Grosvenor's quarry of 1790 near Five-Crosses, the Jockey Mine near the back of the Methodist Church in The Smelt, and the New Grosvenor Mine near Coedpoeth railway station. In a celebratory dinner to mark the commercial opening of the Plas Power colliery in 1880, a speaker compared the newly equipped colliery with those 120 years earlier. These early collieries used a 'whimsey', powered by a horse, to lift coal to the surface. It was sorted by hand, and as it was before railways the delivery of the coal relied on carters. The collieries had agents that were funded to visit public houses and treat the carters so as to persuade them to carry coal from specific collieries. The state of the roads was said to lead to the practice of stockpiling coal in the winter and shipping it in the summer.
A number of colliery waste tips survive in the Coedpoeth area, now grown over, and the remains of shallow workings and bell pits are relatively common in some areas, with scheduled examples near Nant Mill. Early ordnance survey maps from 1872 to the end of the 19th century show several old shafts to the North and West of Coedpoeth, and one location in that area is marked as 'Old Talwrn Colliery'. This appears to be otherwise known as Pentre'r-fron colliery, and was closed after a flooding event in 1819 which resulted in two lives lost and one remarkable survival. John Evans survived for 12 days trapped in darkness in a cavity in the roofspace, eating candles and drinking water dripping from the roof above. To the east of this the Talwrn Colliery was in production from at least the 1850s, and was amalgamated with the Vron Colliery in 1879 to which it was then linked by a rope-hauled incline. The two collieries later joined underground and from 1888 the Talwrn colliery site was no longer used for raising coal, but to provide forced ventilation for the mine. In addition to coal the Vron Colliery produced a considerable quantity of ironstone, which was used in Brymbo.
Vron Colliery had a 50% share in the new Plas Power colliery on which work started in 1875. The owner of the other share, Mr Henry Robertson, bought out Vron Colliery's share in February 1878, and Vron Colliery used this money to fund their purchase of Talwrn Colliery. Plas Power colliery was opened for commercial production in 1880, and a year later the company was renamed as the Broughton and Plas Power Coal Company. Vron Colliery closed in 1930, and the Plas Power colliery closed in 1938. There are no standing remains of the coal mining industry that once flourished in Coedpoeth, though several buildings remain at the nearby site of the Plas Power colliery.
Transport
The village once had its own railway station on the Wrexham and Minera Railway of the Great Western Railway — albeit in name only as it was sited in the parish of Minera. A campaign was launched in 1905 by the business people of Coedpoeth to have a branch line laid from the station to the village centre, one mile distant. Local businesses claimed the station's location was of little benefit to them. The Great Western Railway company did not agree, and the campaign was abandoned in 1906. In 1914, the original station buildings were destroyed in a fire set by militant suffragettes.Originally offering through services to two further halts on the line, the station was a passenger terminus from 1926 and passenger services were withdrawn from 1930, although heavy goods use of the line by Berwig Quarry and Minera Limeworks continued until closure of the line in 1970, after the Limeworks was reduced to a base for road aggregates and was served by road.
Bus services first came to the village in the 1920s; they were first provided by the local government's Wrexham & District Transport Co. Ltd bus service from Wrexham, and followed by Great Western Railway's own bus services.
Richard Johnson of Southsea started operating a pony-and-trap service between Talwrn, Southsea and Wrexham in the 1890s, turning this into a motorised wagonette service in 1899 and then a ford Model T lorry-bus in 1916. In 1928 this service was consolidated with other bus services operated by Johnson's sons, following which a bus service from Talwrn via Southsea to Wrexham was operated by a partnership known as Richard Johnson & Sons from 1928 until the operation - but no vehicles - was sold to Crosville on 22 October 1961.
Eventually Crosville Motor Services expanded into the area, and remained until Arriva North West & Wales came to manage all of their services, vehicles and depot in the area.
Today, the village is linked to Wrexham by two bus services, one run by Arriva Buses Wales and another by D Jones and Son; also GHA Coaches used to provide a night time service, as well as all routes through the village going on to Ruthin and Denbigh, which now also stop along the high street. George Edwards and Son used to provide a daytime service, but in late 2008 they sold their service routes to D Jones and Son.
Historic ford at Nant Mill
An old ford crossing exists on Wood Cottage Lane, near Nant Mill in the Clywedog valley. This shallow river crossing, used to serve as an important passage for farmers during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Though largely forgotten today, the ford remains visible and provides a rare surviving example of historic rural transport infrastructure in the area.Education
Coedpoeth has two schools: Ysgol Penygelli and Ysgol Bryn Tabor. Originally one school in a Victorian building located to the north of the A525, Ysgol Penygelli was split into an infants school incorporating a nursery year and years 1–2, and a junior school, for years 3–6. The junior school is a feeder for the secondary school Ysgol Clywedog, in nearby Wrexham. Ysgol Bryn Tabor shared the same complex as Penygelli Infants to the south of the A525, which was part early 20th-century, with a large 1980s extension. Originally the local LEA planned to refurbish the original building on the north side of the road, but after a fire which destroyed the wooden beams supporting the original Welsh Slate roof, this building was demolished and materials reclaimed for an affordable housing scheme on the site. As a result, a new school complex was built and opened in July 2006, on the playing fields of the newer school, and Penygelli Infants and Penygelli Juniors are now one school again. Ysgol Bryn Tabor then expanded into the old Penygelli Infants site. The old junior school building was left vacant until demolition during March 2007. The site was then used for a new community centre and hall, named Plas Pentwyn. Pentwyn was the name of a farm that once stood nearby, belonging to the Powell family.The original local library was a Carnegie Library built in 1904 as Coedpoeth Free Library. It cost £1,500 at the time, all of which was donated by Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel magnate. It was built in the same local sandstone as other buildings in the village, from quarries nearby, and stands opposite the villages memorial park and bowling greens. When opened, the ground floor featured a billiard table in a games room, as well as a refreshments room, with the rear of the building used for meetings of the local parish government. The reading room, which could also be used as a lecture room, was on the first floor. As the library was modernised, it was moved to the large games room on the ground floor, and the rest of the building became the community council headquarters.
As use of the old library increased, it became crowded, and the facilities were deemed inadequate. When Plas Pentwyn was constructed, room for a new library was provided, leaving the sole purpose for the old Carnegie Library as the headquarters for Coedpoeth Community Council, which has had a growing role in recent years.