Oswestry


Oswestry is a market town, civil parish and historic railway town in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads.
The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough of Oswestry until that was abolished in 2009. At the 2021 Census, the population of Oswestry was 17,509. The town is from the Welsh border and has a mixed English and Welsh heritage.
Oswestry is the largest settlement within the Oswestry Uplands, a designated natural area and national character area.

Toponym

The name Oswestry is first attested in 1191, as Oswaldestroe. This Middle English name transparently derives from the Old English personal name Oswald and the word trēow. Thus the name seems once to have meant 'tree of a man called Ōswald'. However, the traditional Welsh name for the town, Croesoswallt, means 'Oswald's cross', and 'cross' is a possible meaning of Old English trēow. Thus the town's name may have meant 'Oswald's cross' in both English and Welsh.
The Oswald mentioned is widely imagined to have been Oswald of Northumbria, who died at the Battle of Maserfield in 641/642. The location of the battle is debated among scholars, but for much of the twentieth century was assumed to be at Oswestry. However, A. D. Mills's Dictionary of English Place Names concluded that 'the traditional connection with St Oswald, 7th-century king of Northumbria, is uncertain'.
The name and the association with King Oswald have attracted more fanciful interpretations. According to legend, one of the dismembered Oswald's arms was carried to an ash tree by a raven. Miracles were subsequently attributed to the tree, and the legend has it that this was "Oswald's Tree", and gave its name to the town. A spring called 'Oswald's Well' is supposed to have originated where the bird dropped the arm from the tree, though one historian has suggested that it was likely to have had sacred associations long before Oswald's time. The water from the well was believed to have healing properties, particularly for curing eye trouble. Offa's Dyke runs near the well, to the west. This interpretation is supported by a passage in Fouke le Fitz Waryn which states that Oswaldestré was derived from Arbre Oswald, which in turn was changed from La Blanche Launde, which belonged to a Briton called Meredus Fitz Beledyns.
There is an alternative view that Oswestry was named after Oswy, Oswald's brother, who fought a battle here against King Penda in 655 AD. Oswy became King of Northumbria after Oswald's death in 642 AD. The battle of 655 AD was fought near to a river called the Winwead, which it is believed, was the nearby River Vyrnwy. Welsh folklore has it that this battle was called the battle of Pengwern and in it their leader Cynddylan was also killed.

History

Prehistory

The earliest known human settlement in Oswestry is Old Oswestry, one of the best-preserved Iron Age hill forts in Britain, with evidence of construction and occupation between 800BC and 43AD. The site is known in Welsh as Caer Ogyrfan, meaning 'City of Gogyrfan', referring to the father of Guinevere in Arthurian legend.

Saxon times

The Battle of Maserfield is widely thought to have been fought at Oswestry in 641 or 642, between the Anglo-Saxon kings Penda of Mercia and Oswald of Northumbria. However, the location of the battle is debated among scholars.

The Conquest

The Domesday Book of 1086 records the castle being built by Rainald, a Norman Sheriff of Shropshire:.
Alan fitz Flaad, a Breton knight, was granted the feudal barony of Oswestry by King Henry I who, soon after his accession, invited Alan to England with other Breton friends, and gave him forfeited lands in Norfolk and Shropshire, including some which had previously belonged to Ernulf de Hesdin and Robert of Bellême.
Alan's duties to the Crown included supervision of the Welsh border. He also founded Sporle Priory in Norfolk. He married Ada or Adeline, daughter of Ernulf de Hesdin. Their eldest son William FitzAlan was made High Sheriff of Shropshire by King Stephen in 1137. He married a niece of Robert of Gloucester. Alan's younger son, Walter, travelled to Scotland in the train of King David I, Walter becoming the first hereditary Steward of Scotland and ancestor of the Stewart Royal family.

Border town

The town changed hands between the English and the Welsh a number of times during the Middle Ages and still retains some Welsh-language street and place names. In 1972, ITV broadcast a television report asking residents if they thought the town should be English or Welsh, with mixed responses.
In 1149 the castle was captured by Madog ap Maredudd during 'The Anarchy', and it remained in Welsh hands until 1157. Occasionally in the 13th century it is referred to in official records as Blancmuster or Blancmostre, meaning "White Minster". Later, Oswestry was attacked by the forces of Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndŵr during the early years of his rebellion against the English King Henry IV in 1400; it became known as Pentrepoeth or "hot village" as it was burned and nearly totally destroyed by the Welsh. The castle was reduced to a pile of rocks during the English Civil War.
The town is now the home of the Shropshire libraries' Welsh Collection.

Market town

In 1190 the town was granted the right to hold a market each Wednesday. The town built walls for protection, but these were torn down in the English Civil War by the Parliamentarians after they took the town from the Royalists after a brief siege on 22 June 1644, leaving only the Newgate Pillar visible today.
After the foot and mouth outbreak in the late 1960s the animal market was moved out of the town centre. In the 1990s, a statue of a shepherd and sheep was installed in the market square as a memorial to the history of the market site.

Military

Park Hall, east of the town, was taken over by the Army during World War I in 1915 and used as a training camp and military hospital. On 26 December 1918 it burnt to the ground following an electrical fault. The ruined hall and camp remained derelict between the wars, the camp hospital, however, was still in use; the Baschurch Convalescent and Surgical Home moved there in February 1921 and it became known as the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital.
One of the main uses of the land from the 1920s was for motorcycle racing and it became quite a well-known circuit.
The camp was reactivated in July 1939 for Royal Artillery training and the Plotting Officers' School. Following World War II, Oswestry was a prominent military centre for Canadian troops, then for the British Royal Artillery, and finally a training centre for 15 to 17-year-old Infantry Junior Leaders. The camp closed in 1975. During the 1970s some local licensed wildfowlers discharged their shotguns at some passing ducks and were shot themselves by a young military guard, who had mistaken them for an attacking IRA force.
The area previously occupied by the Park Hall military camp is now mainly residential and agricultural land, with a small number of light industrial units. Park Hall Farm became a visitor attraction in 1998, it is home to the Museum of the Welsh Guards. The Park Hall Football Stadium and The Venue is now closed.

Landmarks

, on the northern edge of the town, dominates the northern and eastern approaches. The 3,000-year-old settlement is one of the most spectacular and best preserved Iron Age hill forts in Britain, with evidence of construction and occupation between 800 BC and AD 43.
Other attractions in and around Oswestry include: Cae Glas Park, Shelf Bank, Wilfred Owen Green, Saint Oswald's Well at Maserfield, Oswestry Castle, and the Cambrian Railway Museum located near the former railway station. Oswestry Guildhall, the meeting place of Oswestry Town Council, was completed in 1893.
A story incorporating the names of all of the many pubs once open in Oswestry can be found hanging on a wall inside The Oak Inn on Church Street. There is a tapestry of forty Oswestry pub signs on display in Oswestry Guildhall on the Bailey Head. The Stonehouse Brewery opened in 2007, on the site of the former Weston Wharf railway station at Weston, in nearby Oswestry Rural; Stonehouse Brewery supplies many of the pubs with real ale.
Brogyntyn Hall, which belonged to the Lords Harlech, lies just outside the town. Brogyntyn Park is five and a half acres of parkland occupying the southern slope of the Grade II listed Brogyntyn Estate. It was gifted to Oswestry Town Council by the fourth Lord Harlech, William Ormsby-Gore, in 1952.

Governance

There are two tiers of local government covering Oswestry, at parish and unitary authority level: Oswestry Town Council and Shropshire Council. The Town Council is based at the Guildhall on the Bailey Head. Shropshire Council is based in Shrewsbury, at the Guildhall on Frankwell Quay.
Oswestry is in the North Shropshire constituency and is the largest settlement in the constituency. At the most recent general election, in 2024, Helen Morgan of the Liberal Democrats was re-elected with a majority of 15,311, after previously winning the 2021 North Shropshire by-election with a majority of 5,295. Previous Members of Parliament include Owen Paterson and John Biffen.

Culture

There is a range of arts related activities in the town.
  • The Qube
  • Oswestry Visitor & Exhibition Centre
  • Willow Gallery
  • The Oswestry Town Museum
  • Cambrian Railways Museum
  • Attfield Theatre
  • Fusion Arts organises arts and music activities for young people.
  • Kinokulture, a cinema
  • Hermon Chapel Arts Centre
  • Oswestry Choral Society, the Oswestry Recorded Music Society, and the Oswestry Ladies Choir has developed.
  • OsRocks Choir
  • Wilfred Owen Green
  • Borderland Visual Arts. A network of local artists which holds an annual Open Studios event
  • Borderlines Film Festival
  • The Oswestry Food and Drink Festival
  • Oswestry Balloon Carnival
  • The Whittington International Chamber Music Festival