Mold is the county town of Flintshire and the location for the headquarters of Flintshire County Council. Situated in the the Alun Valley it is some six miles to the west of Hawarden, ten miles to the east of Ruthin and a similar distance south of Holywell.
To the north of the town is found Bailey Hill, once the site of a Romanfort and later a Norman Castle. The Normans therefore christened the place
mont-hault the ‘high hill’, which later became Mohald, then Mould and finally Mold. The Welsh know the town as Yr Wyddgrug; from "gwydd" for ‘tomb’ and "crug" for ‘mound’ hence ‘The Tomb-mound’.
The Norman castle is believed to have been the work of Robert Monthault wo was granted the Marcher lordship of Mold during the reign of William Rufus. The Monthault family continued to hold the lordship for some time afterwards, subject to interruptions. The castle was taken and destroyed by Owain Gwynedd in 1144-1145, regained afterwards by the English and retaken by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth in 1201 and held until his death in 1240. In 1329 Mold passed into the possession of the crown but by the fifteenth century it was held by the Stanleys who rebuilt St. Mary's Church to commemorate the victory of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the town was rapidly industrialised due to the presence of both lead and coal deposits in the nearby hills.
John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson leased the nearby Llyn-y-Pandy lead mine and built a smelting works; by 1835, there were nine lead companies operating in the town. Coal mining was also developed with eight working collieries present in the are by the end of the nineteenth century. Global competition forced the closed of the lead industry the end of the First World War shortly after the last coal mine the Bromfield Colliery also closed.
About a mile west of Mold lies Maes Garmon (the field of Garmon or Germanus) which is supposed to be the site of the Alleluia Victory by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre over the Picts and Scots in the mid fifth century. A commemorative obelisk was erected at Maes Garmon in 1736. Nearby on the Chester Road there is a hill known as Bryn yr Ellyllon or Goblin Hill or hill of elves where the Mold Gold Cape, dating from the Bronze Age, was found in 1833. The town was also the location for the famous Mold Riot of 1869 when a crowd of striking miners were fired on by a detachment of soldiers from nearby Chester and four people, including two women were killed.
There are open-air street markets in the town every Wednesdays and Saturdays, the town hosts the Mold Carnival in June and is the home of Clwyd Theatr Cymru which claims to be Wales' major drama producing theatre company and arts centre. The artist Richard Wilson, considered the founder of British landscape painting, lived in Mold (although he was born near Machynlleth) and the town was the birthplace of the Welsh novellist Daniel Owen.
Table of References
- http://68.1911encyclopedia.org/M/MO/MOLD.htm
- http://www.flintshire.org/
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/northeast/sites/mold_town/
- http://www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk/