History of Wrexham - Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In the 18th century Wrexham was known for its leather industry with skinners and tanners in the town. The horns from cattle were used to make things like combs and buttons. There was also a nail making industry in Wrexham but in the mid-18th century Wrexham was no more than a small market town with a population of perhaps 2,000.

In the late 18th century Wrexham was transformed by the coming of the industrial revolution. It began when the famous entrepreneur John Wilkinson (1728–1808) known as 'Iron Mad Wilkinson' opened Bersham Ironworks in 1762. In 1793 he opened a smelting plant at Brymbo.

Wrexham gained its first newspaper in 1848. Market Hall was built in 1848. In 1863 a volunteer fire brigade was founded.

In 1849 Wrexham was described as:

"A market town, a parliamentary borough, the head of a Union, and a parish, chiefly in the hundred of Bromfield, county of Denbigh; 26 miles (SE by E) from Denbigh, 18 (ESE) from Ruthin, and 187½ (NW) from London; ..... and containing 12,921 inhabitants, of whom 5818 are in the townships of Wrexham Abbot and Wrexham Regis, forming the town."

Wrexham benefitted from good underground water supplies which was essential to the brewing of good beer and brewing became one of its main industries. in the middle of the 19th Century, there were 19 breweries in and around the town Several of these were comparatively large breweries, together with many smaller breweries situated at local inns. Some of the more famous old breweries were the Albion, Cambrian, Eagle, Island Green, Nag's Head (Soames) and Willow.

However, the most famous was the Wrexham Lager brewery which was built between 1881 and 1882 in Central Road. This was the first brewery to be built in the United Kingdom to produce lager beer. Another major producer, Border Breweries, was formed in 1931 by a merger of Soames, Island Green, and the Oswestry firm of Dorsett Owen.

Wrexham is on the edge of the rich Ruabon area marl beds and several brickworks sprang up in the area, among these, the most well known was Wrexham Brick and Tile and Davies Brothers in Abenbury, on the outskirts of Wrexham.

Coal mining was an important industry in the area, and provided employment for large numbers of Wrexham people, however most of the mines were situated well outside of the town. Wrexham's coal field was part of the larger North East Wales field. A number of deep mines were constructed throughout the area including Llay, Gresford, Bersham and Johnstown. A number of new settlements were built on the edge of the town to accommodate miners at a number of the sites including Llay and Pandy (for Gresford).

Other forms of mining and quarrying have taken place around Wrexham throughout its history, these include lead extracted from Minera.

Wrexham was connected to the rest of the UK by rail in 1849 and this eventually became a large and complex network of railways, the main branch being the Wrexham and Minera Branch, which supported the steelworks at nearby Brymbo Steel Mill and the Minera Limeworks. In 1895, the Wrexham and Ellesmere Railway was completed and cut a swathe through the town centre.