This year, our Autumn Meeting will be in the lovely town of Wrexham in North Wales. We will be staying at the Wynnstay Arms in central Wrexham and ideally we should all arrive by lunchtime as the afternoon activities will start 1.30pm.
Friday 27th pm
The afternoon will start with a tour of the fantastic parish church of St Giles which is very close to the Hotel and then we will have a walking tour of the centre of Wrexham led by a Blue badge guide.
In the evening, before the evening meal, we will have a talk given by Zoe Henderson of the Discovering Old Welsh Houses group which will look at the extensive work which has been carried out on timber framed buildings in north Wales, incorporating dendrochronology and house histories.
Richard Hoare / Church Street, Wrexham
Saturday September 28th
On Saturday we will travel by coach to some of the areas around Wrexham which reflect the national importance of the industries in the area. We hope to visit Minera Leadworks, a site which both extracted and worked the lead before it was sent off for smelting, and Bersham Ironworks, greatly developed by John Wilkinson in the late 18th century. He particularly developed a method of boring iron cylinders, initially used for making canon but them employed by Boulton and Watt to make their steam engine cylinders more accurate and effective.
We will have lunch in Gresford, a village with the dubious distinction of being the site of one of the worst mining disasters in the history of Coal mining, but that also has a wonderful, predominantly 15th century, church which we will visit after lunch.
We will then go to Brymbo where we will see the Blast Furnaces and Ironworks which John Wilkinson developed after Bersham and will also have a chance to explore the Fossil Forest within the Carboniferous Limestone which has recently been discovered.
Returning to the Hotel, Karen Murdoch of the Wrexham Museum Service, will talk to us after our meal, about the developments taking place at Wrexham Museum, ‘A Museum of two Halves’.
Sunday 28th am
We hope to visit the Mines Rescue Centre in Wrexham, which is close to the Wrexham Football ground, the source of much recent publicity about Wrexham. It is where Mines Rescue staff (and later the Fire Service) were trained, it contains a great deal of poignant information about the Gresford Mining disaster.
On Sunday morning we will be in our own transport (giving lifts where necessary) and will visit Caergwrle Castle, a Welsh Castle which was briefly refurbished by Edward 1 after his conquest of Wales and we also hope to visit the nearby Park in the Past, a site developed within an old quarry, which has rebuilt a Roman fort.
We still hope to be able to visit Althrey Hall in the Wrexham Maelor, more information to follow! There may also be some minor alterations to the programme between now and September but hopefully this gives you a good idea of the sites covered.
There will be plenty to see over the weekend of this often overlooked area.
You can download a booking form by clicking here.