Chirk, on elevated ground on the Berwyn range of hills, commanding
delightful views of the surrounding scenery. It is a bold castellated
mansion, built of grey stone, partly mantled with ivy, and is supposed to
have been erected on the site of an ancient fortress called by the Welsh
_Castell Crogen_, near which, as is recorded, the celebrated Battle of
Crogen took place in 1164, when the Welsh fought with more than their
usual bravery against Henry II., for the recovery of their independence.
The present castle was built in the reign of Edward I. by Roger Mortimer,
son of Roger, Baron of Wigmore, to whom the king had granted the united
lordship of Chirk and Nanheudwy.
[Picture: Chirk Castle]
The Castle continued in the hands of the Mortimer family but a short
period, it being sold by John, grandson of Roger Mortimer, to Richard
Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, whose family possessed it for three
generations. It afterwards passed to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk and
Justice of North Wales, Chester, and Flint, in right of his wife,
Elizabeth, eldest sister to Thomas, Earl of Arundel. It then devolved
upon the Beauchamp and Neville families, and afterwards became the
property of Sir William Stanley, together with Holt Castle. Henry VIII.
bestowed it upon his natural son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and
Somerset; in the following reign it was granted to Thomas, Lord Seymour,
brother to the Protector Somerset. Queen Elizabeth granted it to her
favourite Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and on his death it became the
property of Lord St. John, of Bletso, whose son, in 1595, sold it to Sir
Thomas Myddelton, Knight, Lord Mayor of London, in a branch of whose
family it still remains.
It is stated that the erection of the Castle was begun in 1011, and
finished in 1013. The building partakes both of the castle and mansion,
the form quadrangular, the angles being strengthened with bastion-like
towers, each surmounted by a small turret. The principal entrance,
through a fifth massive arched tower, is at the north front, leading into
a court-yard 160 feet long by 100 broad. Around this are ranged the
different apartments, and the east side is ornamented by a handsome
colonnaded piazza. The north and east wings are occupied by the family,
and the south and west given up to the offices. The most remarkable of
the apartments are, a saloon of sixty feet by thirty, lighted by three
large mullioned windows looking towards the court; a drawing-room thirty
feet square; and an oak gallery, extending the whole length of the west
wing, one hundred feet by twenty-two, leading to the chapel. The
ceilings throughout are ornamented by rich plaster work, and the rooms
display a large collection of paintings. Among the portraits are those
of the Myddelton family, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Duke of Ormond, and
his son Lord Ossory, the Countess of Warwick, daughter of the fourth Sir
Thomas Myddelton, and afterwards wife to the celebrated Addison, author
of the “_Spectator_” and other classic writings. Among the landscapes
there is a view of the admired water-fall, _Pistill Rhaiadr_, in
Montgomeryshire, represented as falling into the sea. Of this work of
art a pleasant story is told. The artist employed in taking the view was
a foreigner, to whom it was hinted, when he had nearly finished the
picture, that the addition of a few sheep would add to the effect. The
painter replied, “you want some _sheeps in it_. O! O! ver veil. I vill
put you some _sheeps_ it.” He then introduced the sea, and with it
several _ships_! The picture being thus ludicrously transformed, it was
allowed to remain in its altered state as an artistic curiosity; and the
visitor when inspecting it is sure to have his risible muscles disturbed
by so droll a metamorphosis. The gallery contains several old cabinets,
the work probably of Italian or French Artists; one, an exceedingly
handsome one, a gift from Charles II. to the brave Sir Thomas Myddelton.
The history of the Myddelton family is one of national interest. There
were four Sir Thomas Myddeltons at Chirk Castle, the two former knights,
and the two latter baronets. The first Sir Thomas was Lord Mayor of
London when his brother, the celebrated Hugh Myddelton, was knighted for
bringing the new river into the Metropolis. The second Sir Thomas served
in Parliament for the county of Denbigh, and took arms in its support
when he was fifty-seven years old. For his services at Oswestry,
Montgomery, and Holt, in 1643–4, he received the thanks of Parliament
through the Speaker. When he engaged in the service of the Parliament
his own castle became garrisoned for the king, and the veteran knight was
compelled to besiege it with all his force. It remained, however, in the
hands of the royalists till February 1646, when Sir John Watts, the
governor, quitted it, and was captured, with his men, at Churchstoke,
Montgomeryshire. Sir Thomas Myddelton, some ten years afterwards,
abandoned the parliamentary cause, and took up arms with Sir George
Booth, a Cheshire general, to restore the monarchy, and place Charles II.
on the throne. The royalists were few in number, and easily defeated, by
Lambert, who retook Chester, and made Sir George Booth prisoner. He then
laid siege to Chirk Castle, which, after a sharp resistance, was
surrendered by Sir Thomas Myddelton, who deemed it useless, he said, to
oppose the whole kingdom. A resolution was passed in parliament,
authorizing Lambert to demolish the Castle; but, Cromwell dying the same
year, the threatened destruction did not take place. The damage and loss
sustained at Chirk Castle, during the usurpation, are said to have
amounted to £130,000. Such was the reward which the veteran Sir Thomas
Myddelton received for his patriotism. His fate resembled that of his
co-patriot, Major-General Mytton, but was somewhat more disastrous.
Sir Thomas’s son, of the same name, was made a baronet at the
Restoration. The son died in 1663, his father surviving him three years,
when he died at the age of 80 years. His grandson, the fourth Sir
Thomas, and the second baronet, married twice. By his second wife,
Charlotte, daughter of the Lord-Keeper Bridgeman, he had an only
daughter, Charlotte, who married first to the Earl of Warwick, and
secondly to Addison, as already mentioned. Their daughter, Miss Addison,
died unmarried. The baronetage became extinct at the death of Sir
William, son of Sir Richard, brother to the last Sir Thomas, Sir William
having died unmarried in 1718. The estate, by the entailment, came to
Robert Myddelton, eldest son of Richard, the third son of Sir Thomas, the
soldier. He, dying without issue, was succeeded by his brother John,
father of Richard, father of Richard Myddelton, Esq., for many years M.P.
for the Denbigh boroughs, who died unmarried in 1796. The estate was
afterwards divided among his three sisters. The eldest, Mrs. Myddelton
Biddulph, had for her share Chirk Castle and its domain, and it is now in
the possession, as before stated, of her son, Col. Myddelton Biddulph.
The second sister, Maria, who married the Hon. Frederick West, brother of
the late Earl of Delawarr, had for her portion the property in
Llangollen, Rhuabon, Wrexham, and Holt. The third sister had for her
portion Ruthin Castle with its demesnes, and died unmarried; her
property, with that of the Hon. F. West, came into possession of his son,
Frederick Richard West, Esq., M.P. for the Denbigh Boroughs, who now
resides at Ruthin Castle, a portion of which has been re-built, and the
whole greatly embellished under his tasteful superintendence.
Chirk Castle is among the most interesting and oldest-inhabited feudal
buildings in the kingdom. Its
“Towers, unmodernized by tasteless art, remain
Still unsubdued by time.”
The family have hitherto protected it from injury, as it has been
repaired with care and skill where much decay or damage had presented
itself, but in no degree to impair its original character. Within the
last few years considerable improvements and alterations have been made
in it, under the direction and superintendence of the late Mr. Pugin.
The lower apartments are of the pure gothic of the fifteenth century.
The large rooms are in the style of Francois the First. The bed in which
Charles I. slept when he visited Chirk Castle, in his “utmost need,” in
1646, is still shown in a room adjoining the gallery. The south-west
wing has undergone little if any alteration by modern art, and there may
still be traced the architecture of the period in which the fortress was
erected.
The large estate surrounding the Castle has been much improved by Col.
Myddelton Biddulph; the grounds and noble trees that ornament it are kept
in excellent order, and the farms upon the property are all in a
nourishing and healthy condition.
Col. Myddelton Biddulph is Lord Lieutenant of the county of Denbigh, and
representative also for the shire.
HALSTON,
The seat of Edmund Wright, Esq., was for several centuries the property
of the Myttons. It is situated within a mile of Whittington, on the
Oswestry and Ellesmere turnpike road. It is called in ancient deeds
_Haly-stone_ or _Holy-stone_. Near the house stood the abbey, taken down
about a century and a half ago. The Rev. Peter Roberts says, “That it
had been a sanctuary is evident. Meyric Lloyd, lord of some part of
_Uwch Ales_, in the reign of Richard I., would not yield subjection to
the English Government, under which the Hundred of Dyffryn Clwyd and
several others were then, and having taken some English officers that
came there to execute the law, (which was contrary to the customs of the
Britons,) hanged some and killed others. For this act he forfeited his
lands to the king, fled, and _took sanctuary_ at Halston, where (for his
notable enterprises and merited chivalry,) he was taken under the
protection of its possessor, John Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, ‘who made
him general of the army in the besieging of Aeon, in Asia, anno dom.
1190, where he behaved himself,’ as Reynolds informs us, ‘with such
dexterous attempts as were admirable to the spectators.’” [See his
exploits further recorded in our notice of “Llanforda.”]
[Picture: Halston]
In the Saxon era the Lordship of Halston belonged to Edric, at which time
there were on the property two Welshmen and one Frenchman. After the
Conquest Halston became the property of an Earl of Arundel, or of Robert,
Earl of Shrewsbury, and was afterwards bestowed on the Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem. In the 26th Henry VIII. the commandry was valued at
£160 14s. 10d. a year. On the abolition of many of the
military-religious orders and monasteries, Henry empowered John Sewster,
Esq., Scutifer, and afterwards allowed him to dispose of this manor to
Alan Horde, who made an exchange with, or sold it to Edward Mytton, Esq.,
of Habberly, ancestor to the present John Mytton, Esq. This alienation
was subsequently confirmed by Queen Elizabeth.
In a manuscript account of Halston, written in 1821 by the late Rev. C.
A. A. Lloyd, we find the following description:—
“The Manor of Halston is extra-parochial. The Mansion-house of
Halston was formerly situated near the chapel, but in the year 1690
it was removed to its present situation, which is on an elevated spot
of ground rising out of an extensive flat, and formerly subject to
frequent floods. The grandfather of the present owner (the late John
Mytton, Esq.,) was a gentleman of great spirit and enterprise, and at
considerable trouble and expense drained vast tracts of the low
ground, which rendered the neighbourhood more healthy. The river
Perry here forms several islands, and its shores are shaded by oaks,
perhaps the finest in the country.”
After describing the pictures and books at Halston at the time he was
writing, he adds,
“Mr. W. Mytton was engaged for many years in collecting materials for
a History of the County, but unfortunately died before he arranged
them. Among the collection is a manuscript copy of the History of
the County, by Mr. E. Lloyd, of Trenewydd, which Mr. Pennant, by some
blunder, mistook for Mr. Mytton’s.”
The Chapel of Halston is a donative, without any other revenue than what
the chaplain is allowed by the owner, and is of exempt jurisdiction.
The Mytton family are of great antiquity, and their connection with
Shrewsbury is of remote date. The late John Mytton, Esq., sold, among
other property belonging to him in that town, a field called the “Chapel
Yard,” on Coton Hill. When Leland visited Shrewsbury the Myttons lived
on Coton Hill. In the bailiff’s accounts for a year from Michaelmas, 2nd
Richard III., among rents in decasu (in decay) is one “Procapella de
Coten Thome Mytton,” the sum defaced; and his descendant Thomas Mytton,
Esq., was rated for it to the poor as late as 1686. Major-General Thomas
Mytton, the great parliamentary commander in the Civil Wars, was a
descendant of the Myttons of Shrewsbury. Halston was his birth-place,
and he resided there for many years. He was a zealous and untiring
leader of the parliament forces under the Commonwealth, and gave his days
and nights to the Protector’s cause; but he lived long enough to realize
the truth of the poet’s exclamation,
“How wretched is the man that hangs on Princes’ favours!”
He saw men of inferior talent, but ostentatious in profession, placed
over him in rank, and had to suffer the penalty which many others paid
for their attachment to Cromwell—the neglect and indifference of the
party whom he had so long delighted to serve, and the favour of the
Protector extended to sycophants and flatterers.
The late John Mytton, Esq., was the last member but one of the family who
possessed the Halston estates. This unfortunate gentleman passed a brief
life in folly and dissipation, and closed his existence with an
unenviable notoriety. On reaching his majority he found himself the
owner of immense wealth, in money and landed property. Under pernicious
influences he plunged into extravagance, recklessly squandered away his
patrimony, and in a few years became the inmate of a gaol,
“Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed.”
He drew his last breath within the gloomy walls of a prison, at the early
age of thirty-eight, and was interred, with his ancestors, in the
burial-ground at Halston Chapel.
It is painful to advert to so lamentable a career and so distressing an
end. But, whilst we point to Mr. Mytton’s ruinous habits, we cannot
withhold the acknowledgment that he had redeeming qualities. Like most
men of his pursuits, he often found the means he possessed too limited
for his own wants; yet occasionally he would perform noble and generous
deeds, that might be classed with the purest benevolence. His mental
calibre was of no common order. Had he been rightly disciplined in his
youth, and trained to habits of self-denial and literary improvement, his
life might have been honourable, and extended to a good old age. “It was
the misfortune of John Mytton,” as a county historian observes, “to lose
his father in his infancy, and it is remarkable that the heirs of the
house of Halston have for several generations been orphans.”
Mr. Mytton was High Sheriff of Salop in 1823, and represented Shrewsbury
in the last parliament of George III., being elected May 23rd, 1819. He
was a candidate the second time for the same borough, in March, 1820, the
other candidates being Panton Corbet, Esq., and the Hon. Henry Grey
Bennett, but was then defeated. His Parliamentary career was therefore
but of short duration; but brief and useless as it was, it cost him many
thousand pounds, to raise which a large portion of his Shrewsbury and
other property had to be sold.
Mr. Mytton married in 1818, soon after he became of age, a daughter of
Sir Thomas Jones, and sister of the late Sir Thomas John Tyrwhitt Jones,
of Stanley Hall, near Bridgenorth, by whom he had one daughter only, who
is now the wife of Captain Clement Hill, a brother of Lord Hill. Mrs.
Mytton died in 1820, and in the following year he married Caroline, one
of the daughters of Thomas Giffard, Esq., of Chillington, in the county
of Stafford, by whom he had an eldest son John, (who sold the Halston
estate to Mr. Wright,) and several other children. Mrs. Mytton survived
her husband, but at her death, although from Mr. Mytton’s erratic habits
she had been compelled to separate herself from him, she was, at her own
request, laid in the grave at Halston by his side.
The Halston Estate was purchased in April 1847 by the late Edmund Wright,
Esq., of Manchester, from the present Mr. Mytton. The property was
offered for sale by auction on the 13th of that month, at Dee’s Royal
Hotel, Birmingham. At Mr. Wright’s death it came into the possession of
his son, Edmund Wright, Esq., the present worthy owner. Since his
possession of the estate he has greatly improved it. Additions have been
made to the house, and he has otherwise rendered it more convenient and
ornamental. The park has been thoroughly drained, four feet in depth,
within the last three or four years, the main drain being carried
underneath the upper pool, by which means an ample fall for the efficient
working of the drain is secured.
KNOCKIN.
We briefly notice this place, from its antiquity, and having possessed a
castle, erected in the reign of Henry II. Knockin is in the hundred of
Oswestry, as already stated; is a rectory discharged, in the diocese of
St. Asaph, and the deanery of Marchia. It is situated five and a half
miles south-east of Oswestry. The origin of the name is not known.
There is no mention of it in Domesday Book, nor in any of the British
Chronicles before the Conquest. Camden refers to it but with brevity.
The castle was built by Lord L’Estrange, the first of whose family was
Guy L’Estrange (Guido Extraneous,) a younger son of the Duke of Bretagne.
He had three sons, Guy, Hamon, and John, all of whom held lands in
Shropshire by gift from Henry II. The younger Guy was Sheriff of Salop
from the sixth to the eleventh of Henry II.; and again from the
seventeenth to the twenty-first of Henry II., Ralph, his son, gave (the
first of Richard II.) the chapel of Knockin to the canons of Haughmond.
He left no issue, and his three sisters became his co-heiresses. John,
grandson of Guy, in the thirty-third of Henry III., procured a market for
the town on a Tuesday, and a fair on the eve-day and day after the
anniversary of the decollation of St. John the Baptist. Madog, who was
at the head of an insurrection against the king’s officers in North
Wales, marched against the Lord Strange, and defeated him at Knockin.
The male line of the family failed in John Le Strange, who died in the
seventeenth of Edward IV., leaving an only daughter, Joan, who married
George, son and heir of Thomas Stanley, who was created Earl of Derby by
Henry VII. The castle was first demolished in the civil wars in the
reign of King John, and repaired by John Le Strange in the third of Henry
III. The title of Knockin is still kept up, though the family is
extinct, the eldest son in the Derby family being styled Lord Strange.
The castle was long since a heap of ruins, and scarcely a vestige of it
remains to be seen. The materials of which it was composed were worked
up to build the church-walls, &c.; and, “tell it not in Gath, publish it
not in the streets of Askelon!” cart-loads of the stones were carried
away to repair the roads! The Poor-rate return for the parish gives the
following statements:—Acreage, 1,384; gross rental, £2,131; rateable
value assessed to the relief of the poor, £1,916.
LLANYMYNECH
Is situated about six miles from Oswestry, on the turnpike-road leading
from thence to Welshpool. The parish contains one township, _Carreg
Hofa_ (Offa’s stone,) which, although detached from, yet is within the
county of Denbigh, but attached to Montgomeryshire for election and other
purposes. The other two townships, Llwyntidman and Treprenal, are within
the county of Salop, but on the borders of Montgomeryshire. The church
is dedicated to St. Agatha. Patron,—the Bishop of St. Asaph. The
present Rector is the Rev. John Luxmoore. In the chancel is a monument
to the memory of the wife and daughter of George Griffith, Bishop of St.
Asaph, who had been Rector of this parish whilst Canon of that Chapter.
He was of the House of Penrhyn, in Caernarvonshire, and was consecrated
to the above See in October 1660, in reward for his piety and great
sufferings in the royal cause. A tablet, in another part of the church,
has the following singular inscription:—“Randolph Worthington, died in
the West Indies, _of the yellow fever_, _nobly fighting for his king and
country_.” The church and village are beautifully situated on a gentle
slope above the river Vyrnwy, and from Llanymynech Hill present the
appearance of a charming Swiss scene. Various interpretations of the
name of the village are given. Some etymological writers have said that
the word Llanymynech means “the Village of the Miners,” whilst others
contend that it signifies “the Church of the Monks, or Monkstown.” Since
the invasion of the Romans the hill has been known as mineral ground, so
that the origin of the name “Village of the Miners,” is easily
understood. A monastery is said to have been in existence here at an
early date, and hence “the Church of the Monks,” &c.
[Picture: Llanymynech church]
An ancient mansion called CARREG HOFA CASTLE once stood in the parish,
but was demolished about the beginning of the 13th century. Having been
built of wood, not a vestige of the Castle remains. A foss, to guard the
most inaccessible approach on the east, is the only index left. It was
taken and pillaged in 1162, by the two cousins Owen Cyveiliog and Owen ab
Madog. The latter kept possession of it for twenty-five years, and was
eventually slain in it by Gwenwynwyn and Cadwallon, sons of Owen
Cyveiliog.
_Offa’s Dyke_ separates the parish into two nearly equal parts, and
continues its course as described in page 10. The river _Morda_ divides
the parish on the east from Kinnerley, and on the north it joins the
parish of Oswestry.