The Ceiriog Valley (Welsh : Dyffryn Ceiriog) is the valley of the River Ceiriog in north-east Wales. Its Welsh name "Dyffryn Ceiriog" is the name of an electoral ward of Wrexham County Borough. The ward is the largest ward of the county borough by area and forms a strikingly-shaped salient of the county borough between Powys and Denbighshire.
The valley forms part of the traditional county of Denbighshire, and between 1974 and 1996 was part of the short-lived county of Clwyd. Part of the lower end of the valley extends into Shropshire, England. The Ceiriog Valley is 20 kilometres (12 mi) long and runs generally west to east, south of the Vale of Llangollen. It is something of a dead end, with the B4500 road terminating at Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog, a village near the head of the valley.
The 8.25 miles (13.28 km)-long, 2 ft 4+1⁄2 in (724 mm)-gauge Glyn Valley Tramway used to run through some of the valley; it served various quarries and provided a passenger service between Chirk and Glyn Ceiriog.
The valley receives relatively few visitors, despite being only a few miles from the A5 road. It was warmly described by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George as "a little bit of heaven on earth". [1]
The Ceiriog Valley is divided into three communities: from west to east, Ceiriog Ucha ("Upper Ceiriog"), Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog, and Glyntraian. The largest village in the Ceiriog Valley is Glyn Ceiriog (also known as Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog). Villages and hamlets in the Ceiriog Valley include:
Three notable Welsh poets have connections with the Ceiriog Valley: John Hughes (1832–1887) was born on a farm near Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog; Huw Morus (1622–1709) was born and lived near Pandy in the Ceiriog Valley; and Rev. Robert Elis (1812–1875) was a Baptist minister in Glyn Ceiriog from 1838 until 1840. (Hughes took the middle name Ceiriog and also used it as his bardic name; Morus's bardic name was Eos Ceiriog – the Nightingale of Ceiriog; and Elis was better known by his bardic name, Cynddelw.) The Ceiriog Memorial Institute in the village of Glyn Ceiriog was built as a memorial to them all, and contains stained glass windows dedicated to each of their memories.
The Welsh-language novelist Islwyn Ffowc Elis was born in Wrexham, but spent most of his formative childhood years on a hill farm in the Ceiriog Valley.
John Ceiriog Hughes, was a Welsh poet and collector of Welsh folk tunes, sometimes termed a Robert Burns of Wales. He was born at Penybryn Farm, overlooking the village of Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog in the Ceiriog Valley of north-east Wales, then in Denbighshire, now part of Wrexham County Borough. One of eight children, he was a favourite of his mother, Phoebe, a midwife and herbal-medicine expert.
Historic Denbighshire is one of thirteen traditional counties in Wales, a vice-county and a former administrative county, which covers an area in north east Wales. It is a maritime county, bounded to the north by the Irish Sea, to the east by Flintshire, Cheshire and Shropshire, to the south by Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire, and to the west by Caernarfonshire.
Chirk is a town and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, 10 miles south of Wrexham, between it and Oswestry. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 4,468. Historically in the traditional county of Denbighshire, and later Clwyd, it has been part of Wrexham County Borough since a local government reorganisation in 1996. The border with the English county of Shropshire is immediately south of the town, on the other side of the River Ceiriog.
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 136,055. The town of Wrexham is its largest settlement, which together with villages such as Gwersyllt, New Broughton, Bradley and Rhostyllen form a built-up area with 65,692 residents. Other villages in the county borough include Ruabon, Rhosllanerchrugog, Johnstown, Acrefair, Bangor-on-Dee, and Coedpoeth amongst other villages. The county borough has two outlying towns, Chirk and Holt, and various rural settlements in the county borough's large salient in the Ceiriog Valley, and the English Maelor.
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.
The border village and civil parish of St Martin's is in Shropshire, England, just north of Oswestry and east of Chirk.
Glyn Ceiriog is the principal settlement of the Ceiriog Valley and a community in Wrexham County Borough, north-east Wales. Glyn Ceiriog translates simply as Ceiriog Valley, though there are other villages in the valley. The village and community is technically known, in traditional Welsh naming style, as Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog or sometimes Llansanffraid Glyn Ceiriog, which means church of St Ffraid in the Ceiriog Valley, but it has come to be known simply as Glyn Ceiriog, or even Glyn for short. The name Llansanffraid is now more associated with other villages of the same name.
Clwyd South is a constituency of the Senedd. It elects one Member of the Senedd by the first past the post method of election. Also, however, it is one of nine constituencies in the North Wales electoral region, which elects four additional members, in addition to nine constituency members, to produce a degree of proportional representation for the region as a whole.
Ceiriog was a rural district in the administrative county of Denbighshire from 1935 to 1974.
Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog is a village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It lies on the River Ceiriog and is at the end of the B4500 road, five miles (8 km) south-west of Glyn Ceiriog and ten miles (16 km) north-west of Oswestry. It is within the Ceiriog Valley ward, Clwyd South Senedd constituency and Clwyd South UK parliamentary constituency. It is in the community of Ceiriog Ucha.
Ceiriog Ucha, also spelled as Ceiriog Uchaf, is a community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. The community lies in the Ceiriog Valley and comprises the villages of Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog and Tregeiriog as well as surrounding farmland and grouse and pheasant moors. It is a rural district set in low hills. The area is governed by Ceiriog Uchaf Community Council, and had a total population of 346, in 129 households, at the 2001 census. reducing to 317 in 2011.
Glyn[ˈɡlɪn] means "Valley" in Welsh and may refer to:
A pandy is a Welsh name for a fulling mill, and may refer to:
Llanarmon may refer to one of several villages in Wales:
Tregeiriog is a village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It is in the community of Ceiriog Ucha on the B4500 road between Glyn Ceiriog and Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog.
The 2022 Wrexham County Borough Council election took 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 were 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.
Pandy is a hamlet in the Ceiriog Valley, Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It is located on the confluence of the River Ceiriog to the east, and the smaller River Teirw flowing from Nantyr moors to the north-west. The river level at Pandy of the River Ceiriog is ~665 feet (203 m), downstream from Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog, and upstream from Glyn Ceiriog.
Coordinates: 52°54′54″N3°11′49″W / 52.915°N 3.197°W
