Wrexham

Wrexham stands between the Welsh uplands and the lower Dee valley, above the meadows of the Gwenfro. Its market brought together the produce of hill and lowland, while local craftsmen made bucklers prized far beyond the town. Under the Marcher lordship of Bromfield and Yale, Wrexham served as an administrative centre without losing its Welsh speech and customs. The great tower of Saint Giles, raised in the early sixteenth century, proclaimed the wealth of this borderland town.

Weavers, smiths and nail-makers worked alongside the agricultural market, but the eighteenth century brought ironmaking to greater prominence. At nearby Bersham, John Wilkinson used local coal and ironstone to build a thriving business in ordnance and machinery. His cannon-boring patent of 1774 also helped make possible the accurately bored cylinders required by Boulton and Watt's steam engines. The workshops of the Clywedog valley thus supplied both the weapons of European states and the machinery of an expanding industry.