Wrexham Welsh Towns

CHEERING

If you know one thing about this town,

it's probably the football.

Wrexham - the birthplace of the Beautiful Game in Wales,

the Racecourse, the oldest international stadium in the world.

But there's a lot more to Wrexham than just football.

CHEERING

It was one of the places that sparked the Industrial Revolution.

And the site of one of Wales's worst mining disasters.

It introduced lager to Britain,

and may have supplied it to the Titanic.

And it was the place where many Welsh soldiers earned their stripes.

Wrexham is the biggest town in North Wales,

and can trace its origins from Norman times.

It's a border town, just four miles from the English side,

but proudly Welsh.

It was a stop on the cattle drovers' route across North Wales,

and grew up around its weekly market.

But what really put it on the map was a church.

Built between 1490 and 1512, this is the parish church of St Giles.

It's widely regarded as one of the finest examples

of church architecture in Wales.

There was an earlier church here, but it burnt down,

because, according to legend, the town held a market on a Sunday.

The town took heed and changed market day,

and here we are, 500 years later,

with both town and St Giles surviving unscathed.

'Nobody knows the names of the men who built St Giles,

'but some must have been local, and they left clues,

'if you know where to look.'

The original stone carvings, or corbels,

give glimpses into life in the 15th century market town.

There's a pig and its piglets, and some faces,

including this one, who seems to be suffering from toothache, poor chap.

St Giles was finished just after Henry VIII came to the throne.

Britain was still Catholic,

and churches were colourful, highly decorated,

and some of that colour has survived here at St Giles.

The brightly painted angels on the ceiling,

and there's a nasty little red devil up there,

looking down on the congregation,

putting the fear of God into them.

And on the wall below is something remarkable -

the Doom Painting -

a rendering of the Day of Judgement,

which worshippers would have looked at

as they raised their heads from prayer.

But for centuries, the Doom Painting was hidden from view.

Why?

Well, to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon,

Henry had to break with Rome,

and all symbols of the Catholic Church were destroyed,

or, like this painting, covered up.

For anyone who opposed this Reformation of the Church,

the results could be fatal.

One of those dissenters

was a Welsh-speaking Wrexham schoolteacher,

Richard Gwyn.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII's daughter,

Richard Gwyn repeatedly protested about the new Protestant services.

He was arrested and tortured,

but refused to accept the Queen as head of the Church.

Finally, in October 1583, he was sentenced to a terrible death -

he was to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

He was executed in the town's Beast Market,

becoming Wales's first Catholic martyr.

Almost 400 years later,

in 1970, he was made a saint.

This is the tomb of Elihu Yale,

who gave his name to the famous American university.

The descendant of a Wrexham family,

he lived most of his life in America,

before being buried in the town in 1721.

He left his money to Yale College, and in thanks, they took his name.

The church steeple at Yale is an exact copy of this one at St Giles.

By the time of Elihu Yale's death, Wrexham was a bustling market town,

known for its leather manufacturers, and for the brewing of beer.

Wrexham was doing well, but soon the town would change forever.

The Industrial Revolution transformed Britain,

and a Wrexham man was to play a vital part

in lighting the spark of the age.

For centuries, this area was known to have deposits of coal,

iron ore and limestone.

And this, plus a ready supply of water, pulled in the ironmasters.

One of them was a true visionary,

and his nickname tells us all about his passion

for the possibilities of the new industrial age.

He was John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson.

Wilkinson was an industrialist with a will of iron

and a mania for metal.

He set up at Bersham near Wrexham in the 1770s,

and was soon manufacturing iron products more skilfully

than anyone had ever done before.

John Wilkinson, inventor, pioneer, tell us about him.

Yeah, he's definitely... he's an ironmaster,

but he's also an entrepreneur, and as you said, he's iron mad.

He's always investigating new ways

of using iron, and also producing iron,

because it was the latest sort of technology for the time.

As is often the case, it was war

that spurred on Wilkinson's innovations.

The British Board of Ordnance had a problem with British cannon -

that's cannons used by the Royal Navy.

Instead of blowing up the enemy, they were actually just blowing up,

and the cannons had a fault in them,

and he devised new ways of producing the cannon.

He would cast them solid,

and using his invention, the boring machine, with its boring bar,

he would actually, you know, bore out the centre of the cannon,

where the problems were in the metal,

and produce cannons that actually worked.

And he also was very good at rifling.

-And making these?

-Yes.

And that's one of the cannons we found in the Bowling Bank,

where they used to test the cannon

before taking them off to Chester for transport.

What sort of boss was he?

Well, obviously... I think he was probably a typical boss of the time.

You may get an idea of some of his attitudes

to himself and his employees through his tokens that he produces.

Obviously, these become very unpopular in the 19th century,

but this is how he paid his employees.

You could spend these only in company shops?

Yes, only in the company shops, yes.

He put himself on his tokens.

The first commoner to put his profile on a coin.

-Not the King's head, but Iron-Mad John.

-Yes.

"Iron-Mad" Wilkinson would certainly have approved of this.

Just outside Wrexham stands one of the great landmarks

of the industrial age - a marvel of any age.

It was built in 1805, the same year as the Battle of Trafalgar,

and it's still here.

This is Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

It was designed by engineer Thomas Telford,

who later also built the first suspension bridge

across the Menai Straits.

The aqueduct is over a thousand feet long,

and rises 126 feet above the River Dee below.

When it was opened, more than 8,000 people

came to gawp at this stream in the sky.

From down here, it's even more soaring.

These columns are so vast,

and yet the work of the masons is so fine, so delicate,

and the ironwork at the top is revolutionary,

with the cast-iron trough sitting on a series of iron girdles.

It cost £47,000 to build - that's about £3 million in today's money.

In 2006, it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Man-made wonders - the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China,

the Pyramids...

and Pontcysyllte.

It wasn't only industry that brought wealth to Wrexham -

there were also rich families in the area.

This is Erddig, first built in the 1680s.

It passed into the ownership of the Yorke family,

who lived here for 240 years.

They were an eccentric lot,

and all the sons of the Yorkes were called either Philip or Simon.

In the 1970s, the house was in ruins,

but the last Philip Yorke handed it over to the National Trust,

and now it's restored to its mid-19th century glory.

Philip Yorke, with his penny-farthing,

was a well-loved local character.

But the house itself needed some serious renovation

to bring it back to its best.

The work paid off,

and Erddig is now one of the National Trust's treasures.

'Although the most fascinating part of the house

'isn't upstairs, but downstairs.'

The servant quarters are perfectly restored.

'It's real life Downton Abbey.

'House steward Susanne Gronnow was brought up near the house,

'and showed me the extraordinary records

'of Erddig's domestic staff.'

Susanne, life below stairs, um...

complete with the gallery. That's unusual, isn't it?

It is, it's highly unusual,

and here we have one of our earliest photographs,

of servants here at Erddig. It's dated 1852,

and it shows a number of the servants who worked here in that year.

So we've got the butler, the cook, housekeeper...

-Butler in the middle, bottle in hand.

-That's right.

Ready for action, ready to serve the dinner and serve the wine.

And it's interesting, because there they are -

the downstairs people - and upstairs, in the window,

that's the family, is it?

That's right, that's right. And that is highly unusual,

that the family who would have commissioned the photographs

did choose to have their servants commemorated in photographs,

but also to have themselves commemorated with their servants.

And it really shows that a whole community was here

-working and living together to make Erddig the house that it was.

-Yeah.

Our butler in the foreground shown as "Thomas Murray, well was known.

"He who does neither centre stand with bottle clasped within his hand.

"Clever was he at drawing cork.

"And a good hand at knife and fork."

THEY LAUGH

So we know he was very good at his job.

This is the butler's pantry - this is where the best silver was kept -

in the safe over there.

This is where the best wine was kept.

The butler - lord of the house...

-downstairs.

-BELL RINGS

Duty calls.

'A butler's work is never done.

'Coming, my lord.'

Victorian Wrexham was mainly English-speaking,

but Welsh was still strong in nearby villages,

like Rhosllannerchrugog, famed for its music and male voice choirs.

They were regular winners at the National Eisteddfod,

which first came to Wrexham in 1876,

and was notable for the first ever Black Chair,

given because the winner had died before his name was announced.

But the biggest impact which Wrexham made on the life of Wales

was a long way from poems, music and eisteddfodau.

The origins of Wrexham Football Club begin not with a football,

but with one of these.

It's October 1864,

and members of Denbighshire Cricket Club

are stuck for something to do. They decide to play some football,

and it goes so well, they form a separate club,

which makes Wrexham the third oldest professional football club

in the world.

The club was founded at a meeting here,

in the Turf Hotel, still the temple of Wrexham football history.

This was, I mean,

it is the birthplace of Welsh football.

It is, it is.

And, you know,

the Turf is very synonymous with that birth,

because the changing rooms were actually attached to the Turf here.

It was recognised as being the only pub to be on a football ground

for many years, until that stand was put up,

-a new stand was put up.

-And very soon, I mean,

the Racecourse wasn't just the home of Wrexham -

it was the Welsh home as well.

That's right, it was the home of Welsh football.

In the town here, the Wynnstay Hotel, that's where the Welsh FA -

well, the Cambrian FA as it was originally called, were formed.

And the first ever international was played here on the Racecourse,

in 1877 when we played Scotland here.

And it makes us the oldest football stadium in the world at this time.

One of the earliest films of a football international

was filmed at Wrexham in 1912, and shows Wales versus England.

The Welsh captain was Billy Meredith, seen here on the left,

who was born in nearby Chirk, and played for Wrexham

before becoming the most famous British footballer of his day.

Sadly, even Billy Meredith's wizardry couldn't help,

and Wales lost 2-0.

Oh, well, que sera sera.

Whatever will be, will be.

And something else all too readily associated with football

has its roots here.

The soft spring water of the region

makes it ideal for the making of beer.

In the 19th century,

there were 16 breweries in Wrexham.

In 1882, a German immigrant, Robert Graesser, arrived in town.

He thought that the British might like Germany's favourite tipple -

lager.

It took him a decade to get it right, but by the 1890s,

Wrexham had Britain's first successful lager company.

Many locals still preferred their ale darker and warmer.

But the lager sold well abroad, and a bottle was even found in the Sudan

when General Gordon's palace was recaptured in 1898.

That's Gordon of Khartoum.

Here in Wrexham Museum is a copy of a letter

sent by one of the soldiers to the brewery.

"Gentlemen, I enclose herewith one of your labels,

"which was taken off a bottle

"found in the grounds of Gordon's palace at Khartoum.

"I send it as a matter of curiosity, just to let you know

"how far your famous Wrexham lager beer can be had."

And the lager may have been present

at another significant moment in history.

The brewery supplied bottles to the White Star shipping line.

So Wrexham lager may have been on board

and gone down with the Titanic.

FOGHORN

But the taking of alcohol wasn't universally popular.

The temperance movement was strong in chapel-going Wales,

and campaigned vigorously against the demon drink.

This is Marubbi's Cafe, opened in 1896,

where cocoa and coffee were offered as alternatives to lager and beer.

It wasn't easy - one teetotal preacher was driven away.

This was a brewing town,

and there were legions of thirsty men in Wrexham.

And in 1877, there were legions more,

when the Royal Welch Fusiliers opened a base in the town.

This is Hightown Barracks, historic home of the Royal Welch Fusiliers,

and very much part of Wrexham life for the past 125 years.

The barracks are very much still in use -

these are from A Company, Third Battalion The Royal Welsh.

But during the First and Second World Wars,

this is where thousands of raw recruits

came for their basic training.

The regiment was involved in some of the fiercest battles

of the First World War,

and included in its ranks famous poets like Hedd Wyn,

Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.

At the regimental archives in Wrexham,

there are fascinating original documents from the war.

Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley served with the Royal Welsh,

and is also a military historian.

All these vast numbers coming to Wrexham,

and in amongst them, there are the artists and writers.

Well, here's the record book of the depot,

and here we see, amongst the draft,

Robert Graves arriving

in 1914 to join the Third Battalion.

Graves, particularly well known, of course, for Goodbye To All That,

his own record of service in the First World War.

That's the first edition, which had to be called in and pulped

because there were some problems

-with him using material he shouldn't have done.

-Wow.

But we have some very remarkable original material

From Robert Graves.

Here's a receipt for a trench telescope.

This is a bit of an upmarket one, as you see, from a shop, made of brass.

A lot of people made their own out of cardboard tubes.

Just the sort of thing you'd have seen today

at the Diamond Jubilee procession, people looking over the crowd.

But that's to stop you getting your head shot off.

And that's the difference between life and death?

-That's the difference between life and death.

-Mmm. Yeah.

-Siegfried Sassoon?

-Yes.

Well, here's a photograph of him from his own collection.

And there he is, with his famous big ears.

With three friends and a mock regimental goat.

And on the back of this copy here,

we can see what happened to all the others here.

"Wounded," "Wounded," "Killed,"

"Killed," so everyone in that photo, including Sassoon himself,

two were wounded, two were killed.

This is the Royal Welch Fusiliers War Memorial.

Unveiled in 1924,

it commemorates the 10,000 soldiers who died during the First World War.

Most notable at the Battle of Mametz Wood.

10,000 - it's an even more sobering statistic when you realise

those are just the losses from one single regiment.

The First World War also had an impact

on the industrial life of Wrexham.

There'd been mining here since the 16th century,

but now demand for coal grew.

Llay Main was just one of so many collieries around Wrexham,

but in its heyday, this was the biggest in Wales,

the deepest mine in the whole of the UK.

Tragically, it was the mine at nearby Gresford

which became known to everyone.

-NEWSREEL:

-'Views of the coal mine in North Wales

'depict the scene of a terrible pit disaster.

'A big explosion in the Gresford Colliery near Wrexham

'in the early hours of the morning occurred

'when 400 men were working below.'

266 men died in the explosion at Gresford in 1934,

making it the second worst mining disaster in Welsh history.

Albert Rowlands was a teenage apprentice at the mine,

working above ground handing out lamps to the miners.

He's one of the last people still living to remember the disaster,

and the desperate first rescue attempts.

Well, one lad, he'd be about 18,

he said, "I'll go down, anybody come with me?

"I'll go down."

So they volunteered and down they went,

and I realised later in life how brave they were going into that.

And they went down and out, and they...

They were shocked, they could hardly speak.

People were asking, like, "Is my dad down there?"

or, "Have you seen my husband?" and all that kind of thing.

The next that I saw was, um...

bodies being brought out.

And, er...on stretchers.

I counted them. Ten.

Covered over in blankets.

And, er...away they went.

Albert's father, a decorated war hero,

was one of those who perished in the explosion.

In a tragic twist of fate, Albert never got a chance to speak to him

when he was handing out the lamps that fateful night.

I didn't see him at the mine.

He went to the other window.

There was two windows, two boys.

I was on one, another boy on the other.

And he was on the other boy...

on the other boy's window.

And that was it. I didn't ever hear of him, anything at all, afterwards.

The disaster was headline news, but the impact in Wrexham,

especially for those directly affected, was devastating.

How difficult was it?

I mean, Gresford carried on mining coal...

Well, they opened up six month later, but I didn't go anywhere near.

-No.

-No, I was finished with it.

Completely.

The mine owners were fined a derisory £140,

but Gresford was not to be forgotten.

Robert Saint, a Durham miner, wrote a hymn tune as a tribute.

Some of the men who died in the disaster were rescuers from Llay,

so this is fitting -

the Llay Welfare Band playing The Miners' Hymn - "Gresford".

BAND PLAYS: "The Miners' Hymn (Gresford)"

Members of the old Gresford band now play with Llay.

Just like in South Wales,

brass bands were always strong in the mining villages around Wrexham,

and remain so today.

With the outbreak of the Second World War,

Wrexham became home to hundreds of evacuees,

and a massive munitions factory was built on the edge of town,

employing many local women.

Then, in 1945, a new community arrived from much further afield.

Shops like this are a familiar sight in many British towns.

But Wrexham's Polish community is one of the largest in the UK,

and can trace its roots back to the Second World War.

Many Poles fought and died on the Allied side.

On Churchill's orders, refugee camps and hospitals

were built or converted for Polish veterans and their families.

And one of the most important was at Penley near Wrexham.

Hundreds of Poles passed through Penley's camp and hospital.

And some were still living there as late as the 1960s.

One of them was Robert Mazurek's father,

a wounded soldier who married one of the nurses who worked there.

-And you were born here?

-Yes.

Yeah, yeah, certainly was.

It was, er... It was fantastic.

My memories of living here on the hospital - we had nothing,

-but we were all happy.

-This is what's left, is it?

This is what's left. This used to be the social club. Um...

-Parties, dances, um...

-Yeah.

Once a month, they used to have a Polish orchestra

that would either come up from Wolverhampton...

The tickets were sold out in minutes.

-Have you got any proof that these were happy days?

-Yeah!

This is a picture of my father

outside the barrack we used to live in.

Pretty basic.

This one is, again, my father pushing me in a pram.

-That's you?

-That's me, yeah.

You know, this was... Poland in Wales, if you like,

for many of the people that lived on the camp.

-A little bit of Poland dropped into North Wales.

-Yeah, that's correct.

In the years after the Second World War,

Wrexham itself began to change.

It was still a bustling market town,

but by the 1970s and 1980s, the old industries started to fade away.

The coal mines, including Gresford, closed down one by one,

and the huge steelworks at Brymbo finally went the same way,

with the loss of thousands of jobs. The mood was bleak.

But on one glorious night in 1992, all that was forgotten.

In the FA CUP, Wrexham, then bottom of the league,

took on the champions, Arsenal - a mere 91 places above them.

Step forward, Mickey Thomas.

CHANTING AND CHEERING

WHISTLE

-COMMENTATOR:

-It's Thomas who takes it.

Oh, what a goal! Mickey Thomas!

He's done it! The magic little man, at the venerable age of 37.

CHEERING

A second goal, just a few minutes later, sent Arsenal packing.

Oh, he's scored!

Steve Watkin has got a goal!

And Arsenal face humiliation.

But soon, the club itself, the core of local pride,

also faced humiliation.

Wrexham had struggled for years, but the low point was reached in 2002,

when the Racecourse was sold to Alex Hamilton,

a property developer who wanted to move the club from the ground

where they'd played for 130 years.

There began a long legal dispute

between the owner and the club's supporters.

Eventually, a consortium of supporters and local businessmen

bought the club,

but the row had cost Wrexham their place in the Football League.

But things are looking up.

The supporters are now running the club,

and Wrexham are chasing promotion back into the league.

Joey Jones joined Wrexham as a teenager,

before winning European glory with Liverpool in the 1970s.

He's now back and coaching the reserve team.

Joey, does, somehow, Wrexham get in your blood?

Yeah, it does.

I came to Wrexham when I was 15 years old,

and, um...I call them my spiritual home, you know.

I mean, I know I played for Liverpool - and I love Liverpool -

Chelsea and Huddersfield...

This is the place to be for me, you know.

I love living here, the people are friendly.

They go out of their way to help you.

And they certainly get behind their football club.

Does that mean that when the club hit rock bottom,

did that sort of... Were they painful moments?

The worst moments, certainly, of my footballing career.

You know, when...

Cos I was here when we actually went out of the Football League.

To lose that League status...

You know, means an awful lot really, you know.

And, um...as I say, hopefully we can get it back now,

and I'm sure, with the help of the Wrexham people,

the Wrexham supporters, you know, it'll be onwards and upwards,

and we'll get back to where we think we belong.

In 2000, another local icon seemed doomed

when Wrexham Lager ceased brewing in the town.

But now it's come back,

under new management, in a hi-tech micro-brewery,

and using the 1882 German recipe.

They even found the very yeast the original makers used.

I imagine you can't really tell me if there's a secret ingredient,

but, um...is there a secret ingredient?

Um... Not really a secret ingredient,

but it was paramount to us that we found the original recipe,

and the original yeast.

And that was difficult to find - it took us six months.

These little black kegs coming off the production line -

do you sort of send them on their way

with the passion of a master brewer?

Yeah, I mean...

They're now going as far as London, and going towards Manchester way.

So it's, er...

They're getting about a bit, the kegs, yeah.

This is very much a resurrection of old Wrexham.

Is this somehow part of the way ahead?

I think it's got to be.

I mean, when you look around, the young people

who don't seem to have the future we had when we were young,

and, you know, when I was young, there was steelworks,

there was all sorts of heavy industries.

I think it's important that we've got something like this,

and if it's successful,

then there's going to be job opportunities

for the younger generation, and hopefully, if the company grows,

we will take a lot more people on,

and it'll be a major employer in the town again, as it once was.

We have finished our story of Wrexham

on a diet of lager and football, which is fine -

they are signposts to a past

of the days of beating Arsenal in the FA Cup,

of bottles of lager with General Gordon in Khartoum,

on board the Titanic.

But they are also signs of a determination

to take the name Wrexham into the future.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd