Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Village
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Images
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Disaster
- 2 The Village
- 3 The Coalfield
- 4 The Industry
- 5 The Colliery
- 6 The Aftermath
- 7 Sir Stafford Cripps
- 8 The Working Mine
- 9 The Inquiry
- 10 The Management
- 11 The Firemen
- 12 The Inspectorate
- 13 The Miners
- 14 The Union
- 15 The Reports
- 16 The Last Rites
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Nationalisation
- Appendix B The Davy Lamp
- Appendix C Butties
- Appendix D Owners
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
When the compilers of William the Conqueror's Domesday Survey arrived in ‘Cesterscire’ they recorded, five miles south of the city of Chester, a manor called ‘Gretford’. The property of three Normans, Hugh, Osbern and Rainald, it contained ‘a church, a priest and seven villans and twelve bordars [husbandmen] and one Frenchman’.
The Domesday spelling of the name has no significance and was modified as time went by. Both King Offa and his shadowy predecessor Wat placed the lines of their great dykes to the west of the village that developed on the site, making it part of the Anglo- Saxon kingdom of Mercia. A local historian in the early twentieth century rejected suggestions that it had once had a Welsh name: in all the surviving documents, he insisted, it is always referred to as ‘Gresford’, which is ‘evidently English’. But whatever name it went under its history was chequered.
Before the Norman conquest, control of the ‘debatable lands’ along the Welsh border had been effectively in the hands of trusted noblemen. William continued the system, creating an Earldom of Chester for one of his followers, but this seems not to have saved Gresford from harassment by Welsh Britons. The same historian writes
For two hundred years and more after Domesday, a dark veil rests on the parish and district, and when it is raised we find all the lords of the land are Welsh-speaking. The English have either been driven out or have been absorbed and assimilated.
When Edward I finally completed the conquest of Wales the Marcher lordships were left in possession of their powers and privileges, but under the Acts of Union, in the time of Henry VIII, they were abolished. A new county, Denbighshire, was created, incorporating most of the ancient parish of Gresford: for so long in the front line of Anglo-Welsh conflict; Welsh-speaking but bearing an English name; situated barely four miles from the boundary with England, and sharing far more of the characteristics of that lowland landscape than of the bare uplands to the west; subjected for decades to a steady process of anglicisation, yet now for administrative purposes firmly and finally in Wales.
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- Information
- GresfordThe Anatomy of a Disaster, pp. 11 - 13Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999