Industry
Cefn Mawr was formerly heavily industrialised, with large deposits of iron and coal and sandstone, and heavy industry dominated the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Iron was worked at several blast furnaces and forges throughout the area and coal was mined at pits in Cefn, Plas Kynaston and Dolydd. Stone was cut at quarries above Cefn Mawr. Much of the mineral wealth of the area was exported by canal over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Shropshire Union Canal, until the railway reached Ruabon in 1855.
In 1867 Robert Ferdinand Graesser, an industrial chemist from Obermosel in Saxony, Germany, established a chemical works at Plas Kynaston to extract paraffin oil and paraffin wax from the local shale. The company later expanded into the production of coal tar, and carbolic acid (phenol). The site soon became the world's leading producer of phenol. In 1919 the US chemical company Monsanto entered into a partnership with Graesser's chemical works to produce vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin, and later rubber processing chemicals. The site was later operated by Flexsys, a subsidiary of Solutia, but production ceased in 2010. With the closure of the nearby Air Products site at Acrefair, manufacturing in the village has almost disappeared. The village still has a supermarket, which has changed hands from Kwik Save to Somerfield to the Co-Op. A large Tesco store was opened in March 2012 on the former site of the village football team, Cefn Druids. After buying this land, Tesco agreed to contribute to the construction of the new football ground located half a mile (1 km) away near the neighbouring village of Rhosymedre.
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Famous quotes containing the word industry:
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
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