Flintshire

Parishes

Contents

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.

Bibliography

• Beer, Adolph      The Church of St Mary Magdalene, Gwaunysgor, County of Flint          Flintshire Historical Society journal, Vol.7  1920   Welsh Journals Online
• Cerdded gyda hanes : Gan Roger Hadley gyda Ken Davies ; cyfieithiad i'r Gymraeg gan Bryn Hughes = Walking with history : with details of seven walks between, in and around the villages of Trelawnyd and Gwaenysgor, Flintshire, and notes on the history of the area / by Roger Hadley with Ken Davies ; Welsh translation by Bryn Hughes.         Prestatyn : Cyngor Cymuned Trelawnyd a Gwaenysgor, 2000.
• Edwards, Thos.      Historical guide to Prestatyn, Dyserth, Meliden, Newmarket, Gwaenysgor, Llanasa, Talacre, etc.    Prestatyn : John T. Burrows, [1905]
• Glenn, Thomas Allen.        Exploration of neolithic station near Gwaenysgor, Flintshire         1914
• Scarll,  P.  and J. Phillips.      Trelawnyd and Gwaenysgor Millennium Trail       Proceedings of the Dyserth and district field club, (2002), p. 20-22.
• Williams, Joseph E.        Dathlu canmlynedd a hanner - 1835 - 1985 - adeiladu capel cyntaf "Rehoboth" Gwaenysgor yn 1835 [Yr Eglwys Fethodistaidd - Cylchdaith Dyffryn Clwyd].         [Gwaenysgor) : [Rehoboth (Eglwys Fethodisaidd)], 1985

Church History

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 Civilparish of Gwaenysgor :

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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.

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

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.

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.

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Civil Registration

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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Maps

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

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

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Last Updated   3 Feb 2013 - Gareth Hicks