FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   >>  
come." The Village consists of a single street, about half a mile in length. Two Crosses formerly stood in it; the Upper and the Lower, destroyed in 1641. The site of the Lower Cross, at the eastern end, is marked by a Lime tree planted in 1742. Here stood the Parish Stocks, long since perished. More durable, but grotesque in its affectation of Grecian architecture, may be seen close by, the old House of Correction. This spot is still called the Cross Tree. The Fountain opposite the Glynne Arms is designed as a Memorial of the Golden Wedding of the Right Hon. W. E. and Mrs. Gladstone. A little lower down is the new Police Office; and further on is the Institute, containing mineralogical and other specimens, together with a good popular library. In Doomsday Book, Hawarden appears as a Lordship, with a church, two ploughlands--half of one belonging to the church--half an acre of meadow, a wood two leagues long and half a league broad. The whole was valued at 40 shillings; yet on all this were but four villeyns, six boors, and four slaves: so low was the state of population. It was a chief manor, and the capital one of the Hundred of Atiscross, extending from the Dee to the Vale of Clwyd, and forming part of Cheshire. The name is variously spelt in the old records. In Doomsday Book it is Haordine; elsewhere it is Weorden or Haweorden, Harden, HaWordin, Hauwerthyn, Hawardin and Hawardine. It is pretty clearly derived from the Welsh _Din_ or _Dinas_, castle on a hill (although some attribute to it a Saxon derivation), and was no doubt, like the mound called Truman's Hill, west of the church, in the earliest times a British fortification. No Welsh is spoken in Hawarden. By the construction of Offa's Dyke about A.D. 790, stretching from the Dee to the Wye and passing westwards of Hawarden, the place came into the Kingdom of Mercia, and at the time of the Invasion from Normandy is found in the possession of the gallant Edwin. It would appear, however, from the following story, derived, according to Willett's History of Hawarden, from a Saxon MS., that in the tenth century the Welsh were in possession. "In the sixth year of the reign of Conan, King of North Wales, there was in the Christian Temple at a place called Harden, in the Kingdom of North Wales, a Roodloft, in which was placed an image of the Virgin Mary, with a very large cross, which was in the hands of the image, called Holy Rood. About this ti
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26  
27   28   29   30   31   32   >>  



Top keywords:
called
 

Hawarden

 

church

 

Doomsday

 

possession

 

derived

 
Kingdom
 

Harden

 

Truman

 

derivation


attribute

 

HaWordin

 

records

 

Haordine

 
variously
 

forming

 

Cheshire

 

Weorden

 

Haweorden

 

castle


pretty
 

Hauwerthyn

 

Hawardin

 
Hawardine
 
passing
 

century

 

Willett

 

History

 

Christian

 

Temple


Roodloft

 

Virgin

 

stretching

 

construction

 

British

 

fortification

 

spoken

 
westwards
 

gallant

 

Normandy


Mercia

 

Invasion

 
earliest
 
architecture
 

Grecian

 

affectation

 
durable
 

grotesque

 
Correction
 

Glynne