GENUKI : Flintshire, Gwaenysgor, St. Mary Magdalene

Gwaenysgor

"This parish, which is embosomed in hills, and surrounded by lofty mountains, abounds with lead ore, and very extensive mines have been worked for many years with considerable advantage to the proprietors.
The village is pleasantly situated at the base of a ridge of hills, on the summit of which are numerous verdant tumuli, supposed to be the sepulchres of persons of distinction at some remote period."
[From Handbook for the Vale of Clwyd, William Davis, 1856]

Gwaenysgor is one of the ancient parishes of Flintshire. Its two townships of Gwaenysgor and Carnychan are both mentioned in the Domesday book. The village itself, located on the hillside above Prestatyn, is very ancient - Neolithic man had a camp and workshop on the hill to the north of the present village; and there is a Bronze Age barrow on the top of the hill, beneath which a cremation burial has been found. The circular shape of the graveyard surrounding the church, like those around certain other churches in North Wales, suggests that it might possibly have been a Romano-British cemetery. A small bronze figure of a horse, dating from the Romano-British period, was discovered during excavations of a grave in 1875. A Roman milestone has also been found, built into the wall of the churchyard.

Church History
Church Records
Civil Registration

Population
Statistics

Church History

Ordnance Survey reference SJ 075812.
The Domesday Book entry for the village mentions a 'ruined church'. By 1254, the church had been rebuilt, and was valued at twenty shillings. It is a small building. There is a long southern porch, large for the size of the church, which may well have been used for occasions such as inquests and petty trials. There is also a small bell turret. The roof, which dates from the early fifteenth century, is a fine example of its type. The nave and chancel were at one time separated by a rood screen, which was removed when the church was repaired in 1845. There were further repairs in 1892 and during the 1930s.
There is a unique feature: a wooden arch some 6ft 3ins wide, which gives entrance from the porch. It had been plastered over and whitewashed, and was only rediscovered during the renovations of 1931. The arch has carvings of several of the symbols used by the early Christians, and is believed to have survived from the original pre-Norman church.

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 places of worship in the Civil parish of Gwaenysgor :

Name of Chapel	Denomination	Number of "adherents"
Capel yr Orsedd - Welsh	Congregational	8
Rehoboth - Welsh	Wesleyan	90

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Church Records

"The church .... is distinguished for possessing the oldest and most perfect register in the Principality, and perhaps even in the Kingdom; it commences in the year 1538, at which time orders for keeping parish registers were first issued; the entries are regular and entire, and the whole is in excellent preservation".
[From Handbook for the Vale of Clwyd, William Davis, 1856]

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
1538 - 1983	1538 - 1970 1973 - 1995	1538 - 1990

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

Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
1538 - 1812	1538 - 1812	1538 - 1812

Bishop's Transcripts

Bishop's Transcripts for the years shown below have been deposited in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Around the year 1951, most of the Bishop's Transcripts which had been deposited at that time 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 Denbighshire Record Offices, and at the National Library of Wales.
In general, the Bishop's Transcripts are less complete than the parish registers.

Deposited at the National Library of Wales	Microfilmed copies
1664 - 1850	1672 - 1850

I.G.I.

The following have been incorporated into the I.G.I., as part of an "official extraction" programme.
They were extracted from the Bishop's Transcripts, not from the Parish Registers.

Type of Record	Years Covered	I.G.I. Batch Number
Baptisms	1813 - 1850	C056591
Marriages	None	-

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Civil Registration

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

In the GRO indexes to civil registration, entries for Gwaenysgor are found under:

Years 1837 - 1851: Holywell XXVII.nnn
Years 1852 - 1946: Holywell 11b.nnn

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

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Population

In 1831- the population was 247.
In 1901- the population was 205.
[Royal Commission on the Welsh Church - October 1907]

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Statistics

Archdeacon Thomas (1911) gives the area of the parish as 790 acres.

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Last Updated 29 Nov 2009 - Gareth Hicks