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

[eastsussexred]

Originally Posted by Corner Flag

There was a pub on the Holt Road called the London Apprentice and parts of it are still there on the bank behind the now closed Greddington.

Thanks CF, I will see what I can find out.

[eastsussexred]

Originally Posted by eastsussexred

In the attachment of my previous post, William Lewis is a Corvisor (another term for a cordwainer/shoemaker) who's shop was situated at the base of Town Hill, and who was associated with The Cordwainers Arms in 1666. It is also known that there were areas in Medieval Wrexham known as Shoemaker’s Mound and Shoemaker’s Hollow, and that there was another tavern in the town, known as The Shoemaker’s.
Additionally, there was a Crispin Inn at Lower Stansty (now known as Plas Coch) and Wrexham historian A.N. Palmer had hypothesized that an ancient guild of shoemakers may have been responsible for the existence of The Crispin Inn, as St Crispin was the patron Saint of Shoemakers. The Crispin Inn, which was still in existence in the mid 1700’s, also lent its name to the Crispin Field’s, on which, The Racecourse was later built. I have found no specific records relating to a date when The Crispin Inn may have been built, but it is known that Plas Coch (meaning Red Hall) was built around 1580/90 for Sir William Meredith of Stansty, who was The High Sheriff of Stansty and who was the treasurer and paymaster for the British army in the campaigns in The Netherlands, during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. In 1608, Sir William issued a contract to his brother- Edward Meredith (a draper and trader in London) to supply the uniforms and footwear for the soldiers of the army, although Sir William died later that same year and Plas Coch was passed to his family, with Edward Meredith holding the lease. Edward Meredith would also become The High Sheriff of Stansty in 1629, and it may well be, that if A.N. Palmer’s hypothesis regarding a guild of shoemakers is correct, then a possible date range for the construction of The Crispin Inn, would be the first few decades of the 1600’s, due to Edward Meredith’s trade associations. From this point, the area on which the Racecourse was later built, would become known as Crispins Fields, with Crispin Lane running through its lower boundaries.

There is, though, another possibility regarding the origins of The Crispin Inn, in Stansty

At the end of Owain Glyndwr’s war against Henry IV (1400-1415) Wales was left devastated. Extensive destruction of towns, villages and agricultural land took decades to repair, and industry and commerce in Wales all but ground to a halt; moreover, politically, the country ceased to exist in its own right.

When King Henry IV died in 1413, he was succeeded to the throne by his son- Henry, Lord of Monmouth and Brecon (crowned King Henry V at Westminster Abbey on 9th April 1413) and almost immediately, Henry V offered pardons to the remaining Welsh rebels. In 1415, as Henry prepared for War in France, he also offered a pardon to Owain Glyndwr, but never received a response and Owain Glyndwr was never seen again.
Henry then assembled a force of 10,500 men (including 500 Welsh Archers and 23 men-at arms) and sailed to France, although there was no recruiting for any fighting men in North Wales, as the region was still not trusted by the English at that time, and so the Welsh contingent were recruited almost entirely of men from Monmouth and Brecon.
In France, the forces laid siege to the port of Harfleur, in Normandy, which surrendered after five weeks, but Henry had lost many of his soldiers to disease and battle injuries, and so he planned to march to Calais, where he would meet up with his ships and sail back to England. At Agincourt, however, his route was blocked by a French army, 20,000 strong, and at 11am on 25th October, French knights, weighed down by heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield.
Outnumbered three to one, Henry’s army stood their ground and his longbow archers (many of whome were Welsh) let leash a hail of arrows, which stopped the French in their tracks. As more and more French soldiers tried to advance, they too became clogged down in mud and were also slain by the archers. Around 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives at Agincourt, including 40% of the French nobility, while English and Welsh losses amounted to just over 400. The news of victory spurred a period of celebrations across England and parts of Wales, and the 25th of October 1415- St Crispin’s day, became etched into the national psyche, as the day that The Battle of Agincourt was won against overwhelming odds. The victory also gave rise to the name of St Crispin specifically being used for taverns and inns, with a number of new ‘Crispin Inns’ first appearing in records from the early 15th Century. History of the Crispin Inn
Prior to his French campaign, Henry V had placed himself under the spiritual protection of the 7th-century Welsh virgin martyr- St Winefride, and after his return, he visited Shrewsbury Abbey, where the relics of the saint were enshrined, before continuing his pilgrimage 60 miles to St Winefride’s Well (Holywell, Flintshire) the place where she was allegedly beheaded before being miraculously restored to life. There is no record of the route that Henry V took from Shrewsbury to Holywell, and so it does open the possibility that he also passed through Wrexham en route.

[WasanActonlad]

Another consequence of Agincourt was the 2 fingered salute given by the welsh archers to the French to show they were ready for battle.
This was a result of the French cutting off the first 2 fingers of archers if caught, thus preventing them pulling back the string of the bow.....

Now on a different footing, as we know the all blacks do the haka as laying down a challenge prior to an international.....I firmly believe we the welsh should respond by giving our ancient archers salute in response to the haka to show we also are ready for battle.......

Forgive me on this totally different tangent..........."Roman soldier walks into a bar holds his 2 fingers up and says 5 beers please.""

[jonesfach]

Some great stuff on Crispin lane and I never knew about the 2 fingered salute.

[eastsussexred]

Originally Posted by jonesfach

Some great stuff on Crispin lane and I never knew about the 2 fingered salute.

I have been researching the land that the Racecourse was later built on jonesfach, and I am looking for links that tie in this region with the birth of the nation of Wales itself, and specifically how the land at Plas Coch may connect to this. Certainly, Stansty has links to the early Kings of Powys and Wat's Dyke was an Anglo Saxon frontier that the Kings of Powys eventually conquered, prior to the Norman Conquest of England.
Hopefully anything I find will help to secure the future of The Racecourse.
As a sporting venue, the Racecourse can now be dated back to the 18th Century, but hopefully I will find confirmation that links The Racecourse to other evidence I have found, of horseracing in Wrexham in the 1600's, though I cant definately say as yet, whether these races took place on The Racecourse.

[eastsussexred]

Charles James Apperley was born to a wealthy family, in 1778, at Pas Gronow (now demolished) near Wrexham. From an early age, he spent much of his childhood riding horses, but he was sent away to be educated at Rugby School in Warwickshire, in 1790, before joining the Ancient British Light Dragoons, under the command of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, in 1798.
After serving in Ireland, he married the daughter of a Caernarvonshire landowner in 1801, and then settled in Warwickshire, where he devoted himself to fox hunting and the chase.
In 1813, he became the agent for his brother-in-law's estates, and he moved to Llanbeblig, near Caernarvon, where he began to contribute a series of articles to The Sporting Magazine, covering horse racing and hunt meetings, under the pseudenym of "Nimrod".
For the next 20 years, Nimrod published a series of sporting memoirs and reminiscences, and in 1842, the year before his death, he published the memoirs of his early life in Wrexham, in a general and literary journal, known as Fraser's Magazine (attached).
He recalls his childhood friendships with the sons of a Gresford Vicar- Mr Newcome, and recounts a day when the boys were eager to leave the table after eating, as they wished to ride into Wrexham, where the Wrexham Races were taking place.
Charles (Nimrod) wrote that Wrexham Races now (1842) ranked high amonst provincial meetings of the kind, but recalled that in his boyhood days the "race meetings were only in their infancy at that time, little better indeed than what are called leather-plate races."
His memoirs in this instance referred to the days prior to his schooling at Rugby in 1790, and as he was a sports writer and an ex serviceman in Sir Watkin William Wynn's dragoons, he would most likely have made reference if the races in his early days took place at a different location in Wrexham than the Raceces he later referred to.

The Wrexham Races 'on the new course' in the year 1800 (attached previously) appear to have been well established, and organised with the first three days of the meeting each resulting in the prizes of a piece of plate to the value of 50 Guineas each, with the fourth day providing sweepstakes of 5 Guineas each, whereas, the 'leather-plate' races that Charles had refered to, were traditionaly, a much rougher affair, with few rules, enabling jockeys to strike each other and resort to pretty much any behaviour that enabled the jockey to win the race.
This suggests that The Wrexham Races evolved from earlier, less controled meetings, with a new course being developed on the existing venue, probably during the 1780's, although, as previously posted, the earlier meetings date back, prior to the year 1700.

[eastsussexred]

Stansty- the area on which, The Racecourse was built, had traditionally been divided into tenancies of two parts- Stansty Uchaf (Higher Stansty) and Stansty Isaf, (Lower Stansty- where The Racecourse would later be built) and by the mid-13th Century formed a part of the landed possessions of the Cistercian monks of Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangwestl, near Llangollen, with all tenants recorded as being Welsh. During this period, Stansty was located next to an area of farm land known as Northcroft, which seems logical, as the etymology of the name Stansty is also derived from the old English word ‘stan’ meaning stone (enclosure or path) and the old English word ‘sti’ (sty) which evolved from an old Germanic word relating to pigs, and so it may well be that during a brief period of occupation, the Anglo Saxons continued to farm the land, with the area of Stansty specifically reserved for the farming of pigs, until the Welsh forced the Anglo Saxons back to the new boundary of Wats Dyke in the 9th Century.
The land on which, Our Racecourse was later built, would have been at the very edge of the regained Welsh frontier in the wars against the Anglo Saxons.

[eastsussexred]

Originally Posted by eastsussexred

Stansty- the area on which, The Racecourse was built, had traditionally been divided into tenancies of two parts- Stansty Uchaf (Higher Stansty) and Stansty Isaf, (Lower Stansty- where The Racecourse would later be built) and by the mid-13th Century formed a part of the landed possessions of the Cistercian monks of Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangwestl, near Llangollen, with all tenants recorded as being Welsh. During this period, Stansty was located next to an area of farm land known as Northcroft, which seems logical, as the etymology of the name Stansty is also derived from the old English word ‘stan’ meaning stone (enclosure or path) and the old English word ‘sti’ (sty) which evolved from an old Germanic word relating to pigs, and so it may well be that during a brief period of occupation, the Anglo Saxons continued to farm the land, with the area of Stansty specifically reserved for the farming of pigs, until the Welsh forced the Anglo Saxons back to the new boundary of Wats Dyke in the 9th Century.
The land on which, Our Racecourse was later built, would have been at the very edge of the regained Welsh frontier in the wars against the Anglo Saxons.

Valle Crucis ‘valley of the cross’ was a Cistercian Abbey, named after Eliseg’s Pillar- a memorial cross of great significance in Welsh history, which stands nearby. The monastery was founded on 28th January 1201, under the patronage of Madog ap Gruffudd Maelor, the Prince of Powys Fadog (NE Wales). Prior to building the abbey, Madog ap Gruffudd removed the existing settlement in that location, to give the Cistercians the solitude their order required, and he relocated the population to ‘Stansty’.

[Sir Crispin Lane]

Fascinating as ever E S R, maybe next project we could find out more about the origins of 9 acre field ! there's a wrexham heritage society plaque on Westminster drive just along the railings , marking the spot of the water pipe outlet used by steamrollers etc in days gone by.