Abergele, Flintshire

Historical Description

Abergele, a market-town and a parish partly in Flintshire and partly in Denbighshire. The town stands on the coast, 7 miles WNW of St Asaph, 34 W of Chester, and 213 from London. It has a station on the L. & N.W.R. Population, 1981. It consists chiefly of one wide street, along the highway, about a mile from the shore. A weekly market is held on Saturday, and fairs are held on 12 Feb., 2 April, on the day before Holy Thursday, on 18 June, 20 Aug., 9 Oct., and 6 Dec. It has a post office (R.S.O.) The beach is excellent bathing-ground, and the surrounding scenery, of coast and mountain, is good. As a watering-place it has been eclipsed by a modern rival, Pensarn, close to the station and sea. Castcll-y-Cawr, on a high rock about a mile inland from the church, is one of the most perfect camps in Wales; and Corddyn-Mawr, on Coppa'r Wylfa, or " the mount of the watch-tower," a mile farther W, is a large, strong, British hill-fort. Gwrych Castle, under a high hill on the coast, about a mile W of the town, is a modern castellated edifice, with a frontage of 480 yards, a tower 93 feet high, and 17 turrets, and the grounds around it command delightful views. Cefn-yr-Ogof, in the vicinity of Gwrych, is a calcareous rock, pierced with several curious caverns. Near Gwrych Richard II. was betrayed to Boling-broke by Percy. Brynffanigl, in the parish of Abergele, was the residence of Marchudd ab Cynon, Prince of North Wales, and an old mansion, now demolished, was the home of some of the early life of the poetess, Mrs Hemans. Acreage, 9428 of land and 1074 of water; population of the civil parish, 3186; of the ecclesiastical, 2711. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of St Asaph; net value, £384. Patron, the Bishop of St Asaph. The church, which has been restored, has two equal aisles and a square tower. In the churchyard is a granite monument commemorating a terrible railway accident that occurred in 1868, when the Irish mail ran into some trucks laden with petroleum; the oil ignited, and thirty-three passengers were burned to death, and are buried in a common grave in the churchyard. Here is also the grave of seven persons who perished by the burning of the Ocean Monarch in the bay in 1848. There are Congregational, Baptist, Calvinistic Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Abergele from the following:

• Slater's Directory of North & Mid Wales, 1895

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Flintshire is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of Abergele are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following newspapers online:

• Western Mail
• Baner ac Amserau Cymru
• The Wrexham and Denbighshire Advertiser
• The North Wales Chronicle