GENUKI : Flintshire, Bangor, St. Dunawd

Bangor Is-coed / Bangor-on-Dee (Bangor Monachorum)

"The village is pleasantly situated on the eastern bank of the Dee, which is navigable to this place, and is here crossed by a handsome bridge of five arches, connecting the counties of Denbigh and Flint. .... The adjacent scenery in many places is beautiful and richly picturesque, the noble sweeps of the Dee being frequently overshadowed by thick hanging woods, which fringe its elevated banks."
[ A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, S. Lewis, 1834]

Bangor lies in Maelor Saesneg, which is the detached part of Flintshire. The parish comprises the townships of Bangor (which is in Flintshire), and Eyton, Royton, Seswick and Pickhill (all four of which are in Denbighshire).
The parish of Bangor should not be confused with the Denbighshire parish of Isycoed, which lies a few miles to the north, nor with the Flintshire (Maelor Saesneg) parish of Iscoyd (also known as Whitewell).
They are three quite distinct and separate parishes.

In the fifth and sixth centuries, the area was dominated ecclesiastically by the monastery of Bangor, which was established in about A.D. 560 by St. Dunawd, the first Abbott. The monastery was destroyed in about A.D. 616 by Aethelfrith of Northumberland; when, according to Bede, (writing his "History" in the following century), twelve hundred monks were slaughtered and only fifty escaped with their lives. No trace of the monastery remains - some authorities believe that it lies under the present course of the River Dee.
In A.D. 669, Bangor became part of the diocese of Lichfield, and remained so until the diocese of Chester was created in 1541, when it became part of that diocese.
On 30 July 1849, the parish of Bangor was transferred to the diocese of St. Asaph, where it remains.
The name 'Bangor Monachorum' ('Bangor of the monks'), which seems to have been the preferred form in legal documents, is first recorded in 1677. The earliest recorded use of the name 'Bangor Isycoed' or 'Bangor Is-coed', the more common usage, dates from 1699.

Bibliography
Church History
Church Records
Civil Registration

Description and Travel
Maps
Population
Statistics

Bibliography

Daniel, Anne. Memories of Bangor on Dee Country Quest (April 1995), p. 6-9
Jones, Kath. Focusing in on Bangor-on-Dee Country Quest, July 2008, p. 20-21
Magazine of the Bangor-on-Dee Local History Society. Bangor-on-Dee : Bangor-on-Dee Local History Society, 1992.
Race day at Bangor-on-Dee : Welsh railways archive. Vol. 1, no. 7 (May 1993), p. 208-09.
Shelbourne, Eirwen. Bangor-on-Dee - a village apart Country Quest, December 2007, p. 32-33
Williams, Christopher J. How Bangor on Dee went to war, 1914-18 Clwyd Historian = Hanes Bro Clwyd. No. 58 (Spring 2008), p. 27-30

Church History

Ordnance Survey reference SJ 388454.
The list of known rectors of Bangor begins in 1300, and it is believed that the church dates from about the same time. It was extensive restored and rebuilt between 1723 and 1727. It was again restored in 1832, and further modified in 1877. It is presently dedicated to St. Dunawd, who was the first Abbott of the monastery at Bangor; but there is some evidence that an earlier dedication was to St. Deiniol.

The Clwyd FHS website has a photograph of the church

Nonconformist Churches "Welsh Church Commission - County of Flint - The Statistics of the Nonconformist Churches for 1905"lists the following nonconformist place of worship in the Civilparish of "Bangor":

Name of Chapel	Denomination	Number of "adherents"
Not named	English Presbyterian	50

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Church Records

Parish Registers

The following Parish Registers have been deposited at Flintshire Record Office, Hawarden. They may be viewed on microfilm at the Flintshire Record Office, the Denbighshire Record Office, Ruthin, and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. These microfilms are not available elsewhere.

Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
1675 - 1939	1675 - 1900	1675 - 1887

Clwyd FHS has published full transcriptions of the registers (complete with indexes) for the following years :

Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
1675 - 1812	1675 - 1812	1675 - 1812

Bishop's Transcripts

Bishop's Transcripts for the years shown below have been deposited in the Cheshire Record Office, Chester.
In 1990, these Bishop's Transcripts were microfilmed by the LDS; and the films are available on request at Family History Centres of the LDS.
The films may also be viewed at the Flintshire and Cheshire Record Offices.

Microfilmed copies of BT's
1614 - 1848

Nonconformist Records

No nonconformist records for the Bangor area have been deposited at the Flintshire Record Office, Hawarden; nor, so far as is known, elsewhere.

I.G.I. (Nonconformist records)

The I.G.I has no officially extracted nonconformist entries for Bangor.

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Civil Registration

When Civil Registration was introduced (on 1 July 1837), the parish of Bangor was assigned to the No. 2 ("Malpas") sub-district of the Wrexham Registration District, which was co-extensive with the Wrexham poor law Union.

On 30 September 1896, the parish of Bangor was transferred to the No. 1 ("Overton") Overton sub-district of Ellesmere Registration District.

In the GRO indexes to civil registration, entries for Bangor are in the format :

Years 1837 - 1851: Wrexham XXVII. nnn
Years 1851 - 1896: Wrexham 11b. nnn
Years 1896 - 1930: Ellesmere 6a. nnn

(GRO index references have no relevance at the local Superintendent Registrar's Office)

Description and Travel

Bangor-on-Dee - on wikipedia

Bangor-on-Dee Racecourse

Bangor-on-Dee photographs - on geograph.org.uk

Maps

View maps covering the area of this parish and places within its boundaries

On Clwyd FHS's site there is a diagram showing parish names/positions with links to pages for the parish church

Kain, R.J.P., Oliver, R.R., Historic Parishes of England and Wales: an Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata [computer file]. Colchester, Essex: History Data Service, UK Data Archive [distributor], 17 May 2001. SN: 4348. Here is a gazetteer/finding aid plus a set of overview maps to accurately identify the position of parishes within the county

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Population

In 1831- the population was 1389.
In 1901- the population was 1121.
[ Royal Commission on the Welsh Church - October 1907]

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Statistics

Archdeacon Thomas (1911) gives the area of the parish of Bangor as 5592 acres.

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Last Updated 3 April 2013 - Gareth Hicks