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
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