The massive Wrexham AFC history thread (The sad case of a founding members and player of Wrexham...)

[eastsussex]

Originally Posted by dragonspark

excellant research Es, as always, most of my research was done decades ago and now due to work and family commitments do not have the time nor resources to continue, and now the pubs are open again, well il say no more, however from memory and little snippets i collect as i go along, in have read and seen programmes such as "Britain BC" and "The Celts" just to name a couple that infer there was no genocide or removal of indigenous peoples who entered Britain at the end of the last ice age until the present day, Richard prior for one claiming that each "Invasion" was a cultural take over as opposed to a purely military slaughter, ie, Germanic mercenaries already in Britain mainly on the east coast expanded their lands by means of encroachment, alliances and marriages with neighbouring Celtic kingdoms, followed by more different Germanic mercenaries employed by Vortigern, who apparently did not pay them so they took land as payment, and then fought against other Germanic tribes and neighbouring Celtic kingdoms and themselves forming alliances, slowly all the germanic tribes increased their influence and language upon the neighbouring Celtic tribes, therefore by the time the germanic influence had reached Powys, which then extended to Pengwern (shrewsbury), perhaps 200 years, there were indigenous tribes who on the face of it were Germanic in language and customs, this seems to be the case for the change of culture from stone age to bronze age, and likewise bronze age to iron age and from iron age to Roman era, a cultural take over and not ethnic cleansing as the history books suggest, with my own theory of why the Wrexham locality had small hamlets with Germanic names (later cymricised) but all of the surrounding fields, rivers, valleys and mountains retaining their earlier Welsh names.
A slow progressive cultural change which slowed at our area now and stopped in the higher lands, some dna studies do support this, one i read claims there are substantial links to Iberia in UK and Ireland also claiming this is an indication that the first colonists of Britain are responsible for the majority of dna in modern Britain, regardless of the waves of "Invasion", of course there are dna anomalies but in general they do support a cultural take over and not ethnic cleansing

Yes, I remember your post about Richard Prior, DP, and I have watched the programme a number of times, but I’m afraid that I do not agree with his core findings.
There is a fashion amongst academics nowadays to promote the idea of the cultural assimilation of the indigenous Britons by the collective group, known as the Anglo Saxons and this is evidently true, as we now all speak English. But I consider it naïve, or at least, partially driven by ideological factors, for academics to suggest that Anglo Saxon culture pervaded by means of mutual social cohesion, rather than as the consequence of a gradual military conquest. Although, no doubt, there were alliances at first and periodic mutually beneficial unions were formed, such as Powys and Gwynedd with Mercia against the old enemy- the angles of Northumbria, or even occasionally against the Vikings, but the political situation was always changing. These were dangerous times for the Britons, and even more so for those at the bottom of society (as always) whereas those higher in the social hierarchy most likely found it beneficial or safer to collude.

Unless there is a massive show of force at a particular point in time, such as The Nazi Blitzkrieg’s from the late 1930’s, then this is the way that most gradual take-overs occur and always have done. Take for example, India, where Britain had been trading for 157 years but did not begin to seize land until 1757; and like the Britons, who had been subjugated under Roman jurisdiction and customs for centuries, the Indians were also recovering from the effects of 800 years of Muslim rule when the British first started to acquire trading posts. And like in India, the Anglo Saxons eventually took over all positions of high office, while the Britons were frozen out, except in areas where they fought back and retained control of their own land. If this wasn’t the case, then we would not have a Wales or Scotland today as they would have all been assimilated in a single culture of a one nation AEngla land. There would also never have been a ‘Brittany’ in France if it were not for the large numbers of Britons who sought refuge from the Anglo Saxons from the late 4th to the 6th Century, in particular. It could also be asked- did the Romans build the Antonine wall and Hadrians wall to spare the Scots from multi culturalism? It might seem a ridiculous question to ask, but this is the conclusion that would have to be drawn from the existence of Wat’s Dyke and Offa’s Dyke in Wales if the Anglo Saxon take-over was just cultural assimilation. But of course it wasn’t just cultural assimilation; it was a gradual military takeover. As you say, the process occurred at different rates in different regions over a number of centuries; in fact, the effects of that process are still in play with Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whereas the location of England and its proximity to mainland Europe probably aided the Anglo Saxons.
This was the dark ages though, and there are very few contemporary sources for information, particularly from the 4th to 6th Centuries and so most of the information comes from medieval chroniclers who derived their information from Bede.
The following wiki link uses just 4 sources to provide a timeline of Anglo Saxon battles, although does not include the works, for example, of Gildas or Nennius etc.. Even so, many of these battles are also confirmed in other areas, such as the Irish and Scottish annals, and even though all of these records would be, at the very least, tinged with bias and the royal genealogies may have been manipulated to direct a particular narrative, but the sheer number of battles indicates, rather dramatically, that the entire nation was a war zone for 700 years. Again, I have used wiki just to provide a general overview, although there were more battles recorded in different archives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli...-Saxon_Britain

I don’t doubt that there may have been pockets of communities living side by side in different periods, in different places, including, perhaps, around Wrexham, and there was also no doubt traders and settlers from different regions in different parts of the country at different times, although I doubt if those communities shared much cohesion during the numerous turf wars that frequently arose between Powys, Gwynedd and Mercia, for example.
The eastern side of Wat’s Dyke appears to have been in Anglo Saxon hands prior to the Norman invasion.
There really is so much evidence that this was primarily a military invasion that happened over hundreds of years and that the cultural assimilation was a secondary consequence of a gradual onslaught.
Genetically, you will not find enormous amounts of Anglo Saxon DNA in modern day British people, although you will find more in England than in Wales and Scotland, for obvious reasons, but you will also find very little Roman or Viking DNA, because the relatively small groups of invaders (in comparison to the overall population) had a much larger historical impact than their impact on the gene pool.

I think that the history is far more complex than often portrayed DP, but to simply ignore the history as recorded by the later Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Anglo Saxon writers as well as a number of contemporary Roman writers makes no sense whatsoever to me.
There was no ethnic cleansing, as such; instead, the incomers took over and dominated the people who lived here and prescribed their customs and laws- same as the Romans had done previously, and the Vikings and Normans would do later. This was a conquest that occured over a number of centuries (imho).

[Bobo99]

An argument for a gradual assimilation by the Anglo Saxon's could possible be likened to the British in India. In the same way Britain was recovering from centuries of rule by the Romans, India was recovering from centuries of rule by Muslims.
The East India Company and Britain ruled India for over 200 years, but did not conquer by exterminating the local inhabitants and have hardly made a splash in the gene pool. The British lived amongst but separate from the local population. Indian place names were also Anglified.

[eastsussex]

Originally Posted by Bobo99

An argument for a gradual assimilation by the Anglo Saxon's could possible be likened to the British in India. In the same way Britain was recovering from centuries of rule by the Romans, India was recovering from centuries of rule by Muslims.
The East India Company and Britain ruled India for over 200 years, but did not conquer by exterminating the local inhabitants and have hardly made a splash in the gene pool. The British lived amongst but separate from the local population. Indian place names were also Anglified.

I was trying to make a broad comparison Bobo, to express how different situations evolve over time, in the context of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britannia, and show how the situation itself was not conducive to the idea of social cohesion between the Saxons and Britons ‘generally’ although there does appear to be a caveat in relation to the early Mercians, which I think is the source that Dragonspark has mentioned.

The Anglo Saxon word for the indigenous Britons was Wealh, or Wealas, from where we get the modern day name of Wales.
The Wealh are interpreted in a number of different ways, and one of these interpretations is ‘slave’.
The Anglo Saxons regarded the Britons (or Welsh) as inferior people and this was also codified in Anglo Saxon law, but this, in itself, was not unusual for that time.
The Romans had built their empire with an army of slaves- somewhere between 20-40% of the population, and like every other country that was conquered, Britons would have been sold as slaves by the Romans.
The Anglo Saxons were also slave traders and Britannia provided a booty of slaves, to such an extent that when the Normans invaded, they passed laws to prevent the sale of slaves.
The Vikings too were huge slave traders and a large part of their wealth was amassed through an expansive network of slave markets, including Ireland.
As late as the 10th Century, the Welsh King-Maredudd ab Owen paid a huge ransom for 2,000 Welsh slaves and this trade in slaves was still in operation through the port of Bristol when the Normans invaded in the 11th Century.
Britannia, like all countries that were conquered in those days, provided a booty of slaves, although the Welsh, themselves, were also frequently recorded as capturing Anglo Saxons who were then used and sold as slaves.
People were a commodity that could be used and sold at will, and invasion provided the commodity that could make the invaders very wealthy and therefore, even more powerful.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wealh




Writing in the 6th Century to explain the effects of the Anglo Saxon invasion, Gildas wrote
"Some […] were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favour that could be offered to them. […] Others remained still in their country, committing the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the rocks of the seas." (Gildas' On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, 25).

https://www.old-engli.sh/trivia.php?ID=Wales

In the 7th/8th Century, Bede also wrote of the Britons, which he termed 'angles' as being slaves sold in the markets of Rome.


The Anglo Saxons also had a class system, which placed the Britons/Welsh at the bottom of society, so that, for example, the Anglo Saxon law of ‘weregild’ (blood money) determined how much money a victim , or the victims family received if a crime was committed against a person.
In the 9th Century, the average weregild paid for the death of a freeman was 200 shillings, but for a Welshman who owned land, the weregild was only 110 shillings and if he didn’t own any land then the weregeld was only 80 shillings, while thralls and slaves commanded no weregild, and many of those slaves would have been Welsh.
So even when the communities were mixed, the Welsh were placed at the bottom of society and were treated as low status, even in Mercia, although it seems as if the Saxons adopted a different approach when they first started expanding to the west and southwest and settling in the Midlands and Wessex.

Dragonspark highlighted how the names of Penda and his family appear to have had Brythonic roots (from the 6th through to the 7th Century- during the ascendancy of the Kingdom of Mercia) and it does seem as if, in the early days of Mercia and Wessex, their kings forged more alliances with the Welsh as they expanded westward and may have co-existeted on a more equal level in the early days, whereas further to the east, there isn’t really much evidence of peaceful co-existence, but in subsequent years, this co-existence appears to have faltered. Which basically means, as far as I can tell, that the Mercians and Wessex initially needed the Welsh for alliances, and so may have co-existed relatively peacefully until the population of the Anglo Saxons swelled and both Mercia and Wessex grew in power; from which time (by the 8th Century) the status of the Welsh who lived in the area was greatly reduced again and wars ensued as Offa and his contemporaries pushed further West to create a new frontier at Wat’s Dyke.

Generally though, I don’t think that there was much social cohesion between the Anglo Saxons and the Britons/Welsh (as some academics have claimed without much evidence) as the Britons were regarded as lesser people, except in the early days around Mercia and Wessex, when each of these kingdoms was forming and they themselves needed alliances, which I believe may be the period that Dragonspark is referring to.

[eastsussex]

Originally Posted by eastsussex

I was trying to make a broad comparison Bobo, to express how different situations evolve over time, in the context of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britannia, and show how the situation itself was not conducive to the idea of social cohesion between the Saxons and Britons ‘generally’ although there does appear to be a caveat in relation to the early Mercians, which I think is the source that Dragonspark has mentioned.

The Anglo Saxon word for the indigenous Britons was Wealh, or Wealas, from where we get the modern day name of Wales.
The Wealh are interpreted in a number of different ways, and one of these interpretations is ‘slave’.
The Anglo Saxons regarded the Britons (or Welsh) as inferior people and this was also codified in Anglo Saxon law, but this, in itself, was not unusual for that time.
The Romans had built their empire with an army of slaves- somewhere between 20-40% of the population, and like every other country that was conquered, Britons would have been sold as slaves by the Romans.
The Anglo Saxons were also slave traders and Britannia provided a booty of slaves, to such an extent that when the Normans invaded, they passed laws to prevent the sale of slaves.
The Vikings too were huge slave traders and a large part of their wealth was amassed through an expansive network of slave markets, including Ireland.
As late as the 10th Century, the Welsh King-Maredudd ab Owen paid a huge ransom for 2,000 Welsh slaves and this trade in slaves was still in operation through the port of Bristol when the Normans invaded in the 11th Century.
Britannia, like all countries that were conquered in those days, provided a booty of slaves, although the Welsh, themselves, were also frequently recorded as capturing Anglo Saxons who were then used and sold as slaves.
People were a commodity that could be used and sold at will, and invasion provided the commodity that could make the invaders very wealthy and therefore, even more powerful.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wealh




Writing in the 6th Century to explain the effects of the Anglo Saxon invasion, Gildas wrote
"Some […] were murdered in great numbers; others, constrained by famine, came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favour that could be offered to them. […] Others remained still in their country, committing the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the rocks of the seas." (Gildas' On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, 25).

https://www.old-engli.sh/trivia.php?ID=Wales

In the 7th/8th Century, Bede also wrote of the Britons, which he termed 'angles' as being slaves sold in the markets of Rome.


The Anglo Saxons also had a class system, which placed the Britons/Welsh at the bottom of society, so that, for example, the Anglo Saxon law of ‘weregild’ (blood money) determined how much money a victim , or the victims family received if a crime was committed against a person.
In the 9th Century, the average weregild paid for the death of a freeman was 200 shillings, but for a Welshman who owned land, the weregild was only 110 shillings and if he didn’t own any land then the weregeld was only 80 shillings, while thralls and slaves commanded no weregild, and many of those slaves would have been Welsh.
So even when the communities were mixed, the Welsh were placed at the bottom of society and were treated as low status, even in Mercia, although it seems as if the Saxons adopted a different approach when they first started expanding to the west and southwest and settling in the Midlands and Wessex.

Dragonspark highlighted how the names of Penda and his family appear to have had Brythonic roots (from the 6th through to the 7th Century- during the ascendancy of the Kingdom of Mercia) and it does seem as if, in the early days of Mercia and Wessex, their kings forged more alliances with the Welsh as they expanded westward and may have co-existeted on a more equal level in the early days, whereas further to the east, there isn’t really much evidence of peaceful co-existence, but in subsequent years, this co-existence appears to have faltered. Which basically means, as far as I can tell, that the Mercians and Wessex initially needed the Welsh for alliances, and so may have co-existed relatively peacefully until the population of the Anglo Saxons swelled and both Mercia and Wessex grew in power; from which time (by the 8th Century) the status of the Welsh who lived in the area was greatly reduced again and wars ensued as Offa and his contemporaries pushed further West to create a new frontier at Wat’s Dyke.

Generally though, I don’t think that there was much social cohesion between the Anglo Saxons and the Britons/Welsh (as some academics have claimed without much evidence) as the Britons were regarded as lesser people, except in the early days around Mercia and Wessex, when each of these kingdoms was forming and they themselves needed alliances, which I believe may be the period that Dragonspark is referring to.

The caveat in question came in the form of three minor kingdoms – Hwicce, Wreoconsaete and Magonsaete.

Prior to the Roman invasion, Hwicce had been the location of the tribal lands of the iron age people, known as the Dobunni.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwicce
while Wreoconsaete and Magonsaete occupied the area that had previously been controlled by the central group of an iron age tribe, known as the Cornovvi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornovii_(Midlands)
To the west of these Brythonic tribal ranges (in the area that would later become Wales) lived the Ordovices and the Deceangli, although the Ordovices refused to submit to Roman rule and were all but wiped out in a roman campaign in 77/78 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovices

The Deceangli, by contrast, surrendered to Roman rule in 48AD and the population survived to later be annexed by the sub Roman Kingdom of Gwynedd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deceangli

The boundary that separated the Dobunni and Cornovvii to the east and the Ordovices and Deceangli in the west would later be reflected in the line of Wat’s Dyke.

The Cornovii also submitted to Roman rule, but when the Romans left these islands from the end of the 4th Century AD, the Cornovii reformed as a new kingdom- Powys, with their seat of power located at Pengwern (the former Roman administrative centre ‘Viroconium Cornoviorum’ which is now known as Wroxeter).
Both Gwynedd and Powys expanded their influence by occupying the former territory of the Ordovices, but their own kingdoms remained under threat from the military might of the Angles of Northumbria and the expansion of the Saxons of Mercia and Wessex from the east.
In 577, a West Saxon king killed three British rulers and took control of Hwicce but in 628 Penda of Mercia defeated the West Saxons and Hwicce became a sub kingdom.
Cadwallon of Gwynedd then joined forces with Penda of Mercia to invade Northumbria and kill Edwin of Northumbria in 633, while Cynddylan of Pengwern also allied with Penda to protect Powys and defeated Oswald of Northumbria at the Battle of Oswestry in 642. But Oswalds brother – Oswiu of Northumbria later raided Pengwern and killed Cynddylan and most of his family with the remainder being forced to relocate further west.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pengwern
In 655, Oswiu also killed Penda at the Battle of Winwaed and Oswui briefly took control of Mercia but was kicked out of Mercia in 658 and replaced by Penda’s son- Wulfhere. A period of relative calm then followed between Mercia and Powys as a number of new Mercian-controlled sub Kingdoms started to emerge, including Wreocansaete and Magonsaete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreocens%C3%A6te


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magons%C3%A6te

During this period, the Welsh and Mercians may have lived side by side in some communities, although the Welsh were always low status and banned from high office, and so most likely lived in their own, small communities, such as Penn in Wolverhampton. But conflict increased as the Saxon population continued to grow and the Welsh were pushed further west, as can be seen in dominance of Saxon place names on the eastern side of the old Midland Cornovii tribal Range.
The modern town of Wrexham formed the western edge of Cornovii territory, and so many of the surrounding settlements remained in Welsh hands, although a significant number of Saxon settlements, such as Sutton, Marford. Wrightelsham, Stansty, Acton, Bersham etc.. had already been colonised by the Saxons when King Offa of Mercia consolidated his control of the eastern side of Powys by building his dyke in the latter half of the 8th Century.
Over the next Century, both Gwynedd and Powys sought to push the Mercians back, although Gwynedd remained the stronger of the two kingdoms and eventually destroyed an invading Mercian army at The Battle of Conwy in 881, which then led to the end of Mercian hegemony over Wales and forced Aethelred of Mercia to build the new defensive line of Wat’s Dyke, although the dyke was built so that Mercia would still retain control of the mouth of the Dee estuary in the North and the river Severn to the south
Both Mercia and Wessex had also fought a long campaign against the Vikings and so
Anarawd of Gwynedd subsequently formed an alliance with the Vikings of Northumbria, while a weakened Aethelred was forced to submit to the lordship of King Alfred of Wessex, But the Vikings reneged on the deal and attacked Gwynedd in 892, which left Gwynedd and Powys at the mercy of both the Vikings and a revitalised Saxon force of of Mercia and Wessex, and so the two Welsh kingdoms also submitted to King Alfred soon after.

[eastsussex]

To summarise- Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke were built in such close proximity to each other that it is my belief that both dykes represented the same border, as determined by different Anglo Saxon rulers, at different times. Although, contrary to common understanding, it is my belief that the location of Offa’s Dyke was not decided by Offa and his contemporaries, solely as a good place to build a defensive boundary as they expanded to the West, but rather that the location where Offa built the dyke was predetermined by the former tribal boundaries of the Ordovices and the Deceangli, which was always a red line as far as the new kingdom of Gwynedd was concerned- a boundary that represented the Brythonic heritage of their forefathers (the Ordovices and Deceangli).
Ordovices - Roman Britain

It could be said that Offa and his contemporaries were quite literally ‘testing the boundaries’ in the 8th Century by building their dyke on the eastern edge of the traditional boundary line of the proto-Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, while the situation in the proto-Welsh kingdom of Powys was different.
The early kingdom of Powys evolved in an area of the West Midlands in modern day England, which had previously been occupied by the Brythonic tribe- the Cornovii, but Powys would later extend its influence (after the Romans had left) by occupying some of the land to the west that had formerly been occupied by the Ordovices.
As the Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Mercia began to expand from the 6th Century AD, Powys was gradually forced to retreat further west, so that Gwynedd would retain control of the upper Northern tract of the former Ordovices tribal range and Powys would control the area to the south. But by the late 8th Century, most of the eastern side of Powys had been annexed by Mercia, and so Offa and his contemporaries consolidated their territory by building a dyke on the eastern side of the former Ordovices tribal range.

In the 9th Century, the Kingdom of Gwynedd was again in ascendancy and they eventually defeated the Mercians at the Battle of Conwy, which then led to the Saxons withdrawing from North Wales and covering their retreat with a new defensive boundary ‘Wat’s Dyke’.
The conflicts continued periodically with both sides claiming victory from time to time, but the location of this ancient boundary line had predetermined the border of the future nation of Wales, as soon as the Anglo Saxons began to expand westward.

The Normans were fully aware of this fact when they defeated the Anglo Saxons and they too began to extend their control in the late 11th Century.
William the Conqueror left three of his most trusted earls to govern the disputed area of the old kingdom of Powys, on the eastern side of Wat’s Dyke, which they termed Marchia Wallia (the Welsh Marches) and this also gave rise the term ‘Pura Wallia’ (pure Wales) which was the land to the West of Wat’s Dyke that was governed predominantly by Gwynedd.
This border has shifted periodically, depending on the politics of the day, but more than any other physical structure, it was this ancient red line which gave rise to the birth of Wales as a nation, and so this is why I believe that the powers-that-be should recognise and promote The Racecourse, not just in terms of its sporting and community heritage, but also in terms of its location, next to Wat’s Dyke.

[Bobo99]

Spelling of Wrexham.
Letter to Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald newspaper 19 Oct 1850 refers to poem written in 1560 with spelling of Wrexham as Wricksam, also mentions Maister Jeffries of Hackton, ancestor of Hanging Judge Jeffries of Acton. Interesting that the letters author questions that he was born in Gresford not Wrexham due to location of old and new Acton Halls.
https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3598789/3598795
The letter is positioned at about the bottom of the middle of the page.

[Bobo99]

Detailed Ordnance survey maps of Gwrecsam 1872-1881. Map XXV111 shows the Turf Hotel and Racecourse.

https://viewer.library.wales/4761895...%2C2151%2C1749

[jonesfach]

Originally Posted by Bobo99

Detailed Ordnance survey maps of Gwrecsam 1872-1881. Map XXV111 shows the Turf Hotel and Racecourse.

https://viewer.library.wales/4761895...%2C2151%2C1749

Great find

[Rhosymedre Red]

The Redeveloped Kop, 1953, Apologies if posted before. http://www.redpassion.co.uk/forums/a...1&d=1623849558