History
A monastery was established at Bangor in about AD 560 by Saint Dunod and was an important religious centre in the 5th and 6th centuries. This monastery was destroyed in about AD 616 when Aethelfrith, the King of Northumbria, defeated the Kingdom of Powys at the Battle of Chester. The scholar Bede wrote that 1200 monks were slaughtered before the attack. More than a millennium later, the massacre was recounted in a poem entitled "The Monks of Bangor's March" by Sir Walter Scott, and put to music by Ludwig Van Beethoven. Today no trace of the monastery remains and even its site is uncertain.
The settlement at Bangor is nevertheless likely to have continued after this date, although it was not mentioned in the Domesday Book. A village was certainly in existence by 1300, when the present church is believed to have been built. By the late 1690s, the historian Edward Lhwyd recorded that the village still had only 26 houses, but by the end of the 19th century it had significantly expanded, including a free school, coaching inn, a shop, further houses and a brewery.
The five-arched stone arch bridge across the River Dee dates from about 1660 and it is believed to have been built by Inigo Jones. A 1903 suspension bridge by David Rowell & Co. is nearby at Pickhill Meadows.
Read more about this topic: Bangor-on-Dee
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