Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 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
- 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.
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- Information
- GresfordThe Anatomy of a Disaster, pp. 11 - 13Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999