The Hawarden Visitors Hand-Book

The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book, by William

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Title: The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book Revised Edition, 1890
Author: William Henry Gladstone

Release Date: December 3, 2006 [eBook #20012]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAWARDEN VISITORS' HAND-BOOK***

Transcribed from the 1890 Phillipson & Golder edition by David Price, [email protected]

The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book.
REVISED EDITION. 1890.
Chester: PRINTED FOR THE COMPILER BY PHILLIPSON & GOLDER, EASTGATE ROW.
{W. Gladstone. Photographed by John Moffat, Edinburgh. 1884: p0.jpg}
ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Note as to the Illustrations.
The Views of the Castle Gate and of Broughton Lodge are taken from Blocks kindly lent for the purpose of this publication by the Proprietor of the Leisure Hour. And for the View of the House and Flower-garden I am indebted to the courtesy of the Proprietors of Harpers Magazine.
W. H. G.

Regulations as to Hawarden Park and Old Castle.
Visitors are allowed to use the Gravel Drives through the Park and Wood between Noon and Sunset.
Persons exceeding this permission and not keeping to the Carriage Road will be deemed Trespassers.
The Park is closed on Good Friday and Whit-Monday.
Dogs not admitted.
Excursion parties can only be received by special permission, and not later in the year than the first Monday in August.
The House is in no case shown.

Hawarden Village and Manor.
Hawarden, in Flintshire, lies 6 miles West of Chester, at a height of 250 feet, overlooking a large tract of Cheshire and the Estuary of the Dee. It is now in direct communication with the Railway world by the opening of the Hawarden and Wirral lines. It is also easily reached from Sandycroft Station, or from Queen's Ferry, (1.5 m.)--whence the Church is plainly seen--or again from Broughton Hall Station (2.25m.). The Glynne Arms offers plain but comfortable accommodation. There are also some smaller hostelries, and a Coffee House called "The Welcome."
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 time there happened a very hot and dry summer; so dry that there was not grass for the cattle; upon which