Ponciau | |
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![]() Post office and Salem Congregationalist chapel, Bank Street, Ponciau | |
Location within Wrexham | |
OS grid reference | SJ294467 |
Community | |
Principal area | |
Country | Wales |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | WREXHAM |
Postcode district | LL14 |
Dialling code | 01978 |
Police | North Wales |
Fire | North Wales |
Ambulance | Welsh |
UK Parliament | |
Senedd Cymru – Welsh Parliament | |
Ponciau is a village within the community of Rhosllanerchrugog, Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It is close to the villages of Legacy, Pentre Bychan and Johnstown and is overlooked by Ruabon Mountain.
The village name is also applied to a larger electoral ward, whose population at the 2011 Census was 4,842. [1]
The Welsh word ponc, plural ponciau, means "bank" or "hillock", and the village probably takes its name from the large number of spoil tips which formerly covered the area. The village name was spelt using the form "Ponkey" until 1932, when the villagers convened a meeting to petition for its change to Ponciau, feeling the earlier spelling to be ugly in addition to inaccurately representing Welsh language phonetics. [2] [3] While this was based on a belief that "Ponkey" was an anglicised spelling, it in fact probably reflected a local pronunciation of the word in the dialect of Denbighshire, where the word ending -au was pronounced -e or -ey. [4]
Ponciau grew up around coal and iron ore mining and ironfounding. Iron ore was mined nearby at Llwyneinion. A coal pit was recorded here in 1757, with a lease on land being taken out by the great industrialist John Wilkinson, while the Ponciau ironworks is thought to have been started in 1807 by Thomas Jones of Gardden. [5] A second ironworks was commenced nearby at Aberderfyn in the same period. [5] Houses were built nearby, with little regard for planning, to house the workers. At Brynydd, close to the Royal Oak public house, was the former site of typical very basic, one room, terraced, workers' houses.
Ponciau and Rhosllanerchrugog previously had more than 150 public houses but the majority of those have closed. The Colliers Arms and Horse & Jockey still remain. One of the main streets in Ponciau is Chapel Street, which once contained a large number of nonconformist chapels: the Ponciau area had been one of the main centres of the 1859 and 1904-5 Welsh religious revivals. Several chapels remain in use. Many of the old buildings in the village are made from distinctive 'Ruabon Red' bricks, the product of local clays from the Ruabon Brick and Terracotta Company.
Ponciau ward has one of the largest populations (4,486) of Wrexham County Borough. The ward is described as "The Ponciau North, Ponciau South and Rhos wards of the Community of Rhosllanerchrugog and the Aberoer and Pentrebychan wards of the Community of Esclusham" in the OPSI document Statutory Instrument 1998 No. 3142. 29% of households do not own a car. A section of the ward boundary follows the path of the River Clywedog.
The Ponciau Banks, earlier known as the Ponkey Banks, were an area of old coal spoil heaps covering around 18 acres adjacent to the village. [6] In the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century, the area was used for unofficial 'outcropping' by local miners. These workings were opened particularly during the miners' strike in 1921 and the 1926 lockout, when as many as 50 such pits were operating, to the concern of local union officials. [7] These pits were later capped by the National Coal Board to leave 16 acres (65,000 m2) of land being sold in 1932 for the sum of £500 to be re-developed as a park. Much of the landscaping of the park to the form that can be seen today was organised by the Miner's Institute Committee. The first sod was cut in June 1932, with the work being carried out by 50 local volunteers along with international students.
Edward, Prince of Wales paid a visit to the Ponciau Banks in May 1934 to view the progress. In 1935 the laying of the football pitch was completed and the local team, Rhos Aelwyd, have used this pitch for a number of years. The Second World War temporarily halted the reclamation works but in 1950 the works re-commenced. In the interim, the Ponciau Banks were used as the site of the "austerity" National Eisteddfod of 1945.
The park has been the site of many events, including the Gorsedd stone circle from the 1961 Eisteddfod.
The Ponciau Banks park was refurbished by Wrexham County Borough Council in 2009 using National Lottery funding. The development added a user centre and improved recreational and sports facilities, including tennis courts, bowling greens, skateboarding facilities, a BMX cycle track and a children's play area. [8]
In 1861 the Great Western Railway constructed an industrial branch line from Garden Lodge Junction, north of Ruabon, to the furnaces at Ponciau and Aberderfyn, which was later extended to Legacy. By 1901 this branch had been connected to the newly extended branch line from Froncysyllte via Acrefair, Plasbennion, Wynn Hall and Rhosllannerchrugog to Legacy. The Ponkey Branch, as it was then known, had a short lived passenger service between 1905 and 1915 with halts at Fennant Road, Aberderfyn and Ponkey (Ponciau) Crossing. Since the closure of passenger services on this lines the village has relied on road transport.[ citation needed ]
37% of the population of Ponciau speak Welsh (per the 2001 Census).
Llangollen is a town and community, situated on the River Dee, in Denbighshire, Wales. Its riverside location forms the edge of the Berwyn range, and the Dee Valley section of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with the easternmost point of the Dee Valley Way being within the town. It had a population of 3,658 at the 2011 census.
Wrexham County Borough is a county borough in the north-east of Wales. It borders England to the east and south-east, Powys to the south-west, Denbighshire to the west and Flintshire to the north-west. The county borough has a population of over 135,000 inhabitants, with around 65,000 residing in either the town of Wrexham, the surrounding conurbation of urban villages around Wrexham, or the two other towns in the county borough, Chirk and Holt. The remainder lives to the south and east of Wrexham in more rural areas, including the county borough's large salient into the Ceiriog Valley, and the English Maelor.
Rhosllanerchrugog is a large village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It lies within the historic county of Denbighshire. The entire built-up area including Penycae, Ruabon and Cefn Mawr had a population of 25,362.
Ruabon is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The name comes from Rhiw Fabon, rhiw being the Welsh word for "slope" or "hillside" and Fabon being a mutation from St Mabon, the original church name, of earlier, Celtic origin. An older English spelling, Rhuabon, can sometimes be seen.
Clwyd South is a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Westminster). The constituency was created in 1997, and it elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post method of election.
Wynn Hall is a 17th-century house in the old hamlet of Bodylltyn in Ruabon, Wrexham, Wales standing at the junction of the Penycae Road and Plas Bennion Road. It was built in about 1649 by William Wynn and is a Grade II* listed building.
Isaac Daniel Hooson, or I. D. Hooson as he was commonly known, was a Welsh solicitor and poet.
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Wrexham was a rural district in the administrative county of Denbighshire from 1894 and 1974.
Johnstown is a village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, and forms part of the old coal mining community of Rhosllannerchrugog. It is thought to have been named after John Bury, a mid 19th century member of Wrexham's first Town Council, who built a number of houses in the area.
Rhostyllen is a village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, south-west of the town of Wrexham. At the time of the 2001 census, area Wrexham 014A, which includes Rhostyllen itself, had a population of 1,383 in 599 households. Its name may be derived from the Welsh words rhos and estyll.
The North Wales Mineral Railway was formed to carry coal and ironstone from the mineral-bearing area around Wrexham to the River Dee wharves. It was extended to run from Shrewsbury and formed part of a main line trunk route, under the title The Shrewsbury and Chester Railway. It opened in 1846 from Chester to Ruabon, and in 1848 from Ruabon to Shrewsbury. It later merged with the Great Western Railway.
Thomas William Jones, Baron Maelor was a British Labour politician.
Bersham Colliery was a large coal mine located near Rhostyllen in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The mine accessed seams found in the Denbighshire Coalfield.
The Ruabon Brook Tramway was a Welsh branch railway line linking the Ruabon coalfield to the Shropshire Union Canal at Froncysyllte, with a private extension into the Monsanto works at Cefn Mawr which reconnected to the main line at Trevor. The area was rich in coal, clay and minerals.
The North Wales Miners' Association was a trade union representing coal miners in Wales.
Ponkey Crossing Halt railway station served the southern area of Ponciau, a village that lies within the community of Rhosllanerchrugog in Wales. Opened in 1905, it had closed by 1915, partly as a result of WWI and also due to road transport competition. On 1 August 1861, the Great Western Railway had opened a mineral branch from just north of Ruabon to serve the blast furnaces of the iron works at Aberderfyn and Ponciau. The line was extended to Legacy on 27 August 1876.
The 2022 Wrexham County Borough Council election is due to take place on 5 May 2022 to elect 56 members to Wrexham County Borough Council, the principal council of Wrexham County Borough, Wales. On the same day, elections will be held to the other 21 local authorities, and community councils in Wales as part of the 2022 Welsh local elections. The previous Wrexham County Borough all-council election took place in May 2017 and future elections will take place every five years, with the next scheduled for 2027.
Bonc yr Hafod is a country park, on the former site of Hafod Colliery, near Johnstown and Pentre Bychan in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The country park is centred on a former spoil tip hill, known locally as "Picnic Mountain", rising up 150 metres (490 ft). The country park is 90 acres (0.36 km2) in size of mainly woodlands and grasslands. The park is home to one of the largest community woodlands in North-east Wales.
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