Town in Denbighshire, Wales
Denbigh
The man who asked 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' was born in Denbigh, a hilltop castle town where an Elizabethan earl tried to build a cathedral and never finished it.
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Key information
- County
- Denbighshire
- Nation
- Wales
- Known for
- Its hilltop castle, town walls, the Denbigh Plum and explorer Henry Morton Stanley
- Famous people
- Henry Morton Stanley, Sir Hugh Myddelton, Humphrey Llwyd, Thomas Gee
- Football clubs
- Denbigh Town
About Denbigh
The explorer who started life as John Rowlands
Denbigh's most famous son set off from here under a different name. Henry Morton Stanley was born in the town in 1841 as John Rowlands, into poverty, and spent much of his childhood in a workhouse in nearby St Asaph. He emigrated to America as a young man, took a new name and became a journalist. In 1871 he tracked down the missing missionary David Livingstone in Africa and supposedly greeted him with the line 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?', one of the most quoted sentences in the English language. It is a long way from a Vale of Clwyd market town to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, and Denbigh has never quite stopped being fascinated by the journey.
A castle built to keep Wales in order
Denbigh Castle sits on a rocky hill above the town, and its story starts with a conquest. During his conquest of Wales, Edward I granted the lordship of Denbigh to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, in 1282. Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the last Welsh prince to rule independently, was captured and executed the following year. De Lacy began a castle and a walled town together. The most striking survivor is the triple-towered gatehouse, with a worn statue in a niche that is traditionally taken to be de Lacy himself. The walls once enclosed a planned English-style borough. Part of the circuit survives, including Burgess Gate, one of the old entrances to the town. Denbigh's fortress had a second great moment in the Civil War. It stayed loyal to Charles I and held out against Parliament's army for around six months before surrendering in October 1646, one of the last Royalist strongholds in Wales to fall.
The cathedral that never was
Just inside the old town stands a roofless, unfinished church with an ambitious past. Leicester's Church was begun in 1578 by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Elizabeth I who held the lordship of Denbigh. It was meant to be a grand Protestant church, said to be planned as a replacement for the cathedral at St Asaph. Work was abandoned in 1584, and the church remained unfinished when Dudley died in 1588. The great shell was left standing, and the grass has been growing inside it ever since. It is an odd survivor: a statement of Elizabethan power that ran out of patron.
Printers, mapmakers and a water supply for London
For a market town of modest size, Denbigh has produced some serious names. Humphrey Llwyd, born here in 1527, was a physician, antiquary and cartographer whose map of Wales appeared in the great atlas of Abraham Ortelius. Sir Hugh Myddelton, born near the town, became the goldsmith and entrepreneur behind the New River, which brought fresh water to London in the early seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century Thomas Gee turned Denbigh into a centre of Welsh-language publishing. His press produced books and the influential newspaper Baner ac Amserau Cymru, which shaped Welsh public opinion on religion and politics. The town has also hosted the National Eisteddfod, Wales's great festival of language and music, more than once.
Plums, a derelict asylum and a Gothic skyline
The Vale of Clwyd is plum country, and Denbigh gives its name to a local variety, the Denbigh Plum. Each autumn the town holds a Plum Festival to celebrate the fruit, with stalls and local produce. On the edge of town stands a very different landmark. The North Wales Hospital, an asylum that opened in 1848 and closed in 1995, is a huge Gothic complex that has stood empty for years and is a familiar sight to anyone driving through. For football fans, the local side is Denbigh Town, who play in the Welsh leagues and give the town a weekend focus beyond the castle and the market.