County in Wales
Flintshire
A Bronze Age gold cape, a Prime Minister's wheelbarrowed library and wings for airliners: Flintshire packs oddly big stories into a small corner of north-east Wales.
Key information
- County
- Flintshire (Welsh: Sir y Fflint)
- Nation
- Wales
- Population
- about 155,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Flint Castle, St Winefride's Well, Gladstone's Library, Airbus wing-making at Broughton, the Mold Gold Cape
- Famous people
- William Ewart Gladstone, Daniel Owen, Thomas Pennant
- Football clubs
- Connah's Quay Nomads, Flint Town United, Airbus UK Broughton, Mold Alexandra
About Flintshire
The golden cape and the ghost on Fairies' Hill
In 1833 workmen digging stone near Mold broke into a burial mound and found a skeleton wrapped in something dazzling: a cape beaten from a single sheet of gold, decorated with rows of ribs and bosses. It dates from roughly 1900 to 1600 BC and is among the finest pieces of Bronze Age goldwork found anywhere in Europe. The mound was called Bryn yr Ellyllon, or Fairies' Hill, and local tales spoke of a ghostly figure in golden armour seen there. The cape now lives in the British Museum, but Mold still claims it, and it remains the town's most famous find.
The castle where a king lost his crown
Flint Castle was the very first of Edward I's great Welsh castles, begun in 1277 on the edge of the Dee estuary. Its odd feature is the great tower, set apart from the rest of the castle and ringed by its own moat, a design borrowed from France. In 1399 the castle became the stage for a political earthquake. Richard II was brought here and met Henry Bolingbroke, and the king left as a prisoner. Henry became Henry IV. Shakespeare set a scene of Richard II at Flint, which is how the little town ended up in one of English drama's great tragedies.
Wales's long walk to a holy spring
At Holywell (Treffynnon), the water gushing out of the ground is said to mark the spot where St Winefride's head fell. The legend says she refused the advances of a prince named Caradc, who cut off her head in a rage; a spring burst from the ground, and her uncle St Beuno restored her to life. Pilgrims have been coming ever since. The elegant stone well chapel was built in the late 15th century, with links to Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. The well was a draw for pilgrims through the centuries, including, tradition says, Henry V, and it has earned the nickname the Lourdes of Wales. Down the road, the Greenfield Valley once hummed with copper, brass and cotton mills, and the ruins of Basingwerk Abbey sit at its foot.
A Prime Minister, a wheelbarrow and a very good library
William Gladstone, four times Prime Minister, lived at Hawarden Castle through his marriage to Catherine Glynne. He was a ferocious reader and by his later years owned thousands of books. He moved a large part of his collection to Hawarden, and the story goes that he wheeled many of the volumes across himself, to a temporary corrugated-iron building commonly called the Tin Tabernacle. His own study in the castle was the one nicknamed the Temple of Peace. That collection became St Deiniol's Library, opened in 1894, and is now Gladstone's Library, the only Prime Ministerial memorial library in Britain, where readers can stay overnight among the shelves. Gladstone died at Hawarden Castle in 1898.
From Wellington bombers to airliner wings
Broughton, near Hawarden, began life in the Second World War as a factory for Wellington bombers. Aircraft have been built there ever since, and today the site makes wings for Airbus airliners. Those wings are flown out in the enormous Beluga transporters, a bulbous white sight over the Dee estuary. It makes Flintshire a surprising centre of global aviation. A good share of the planes carrying holidaymakers across the world have flown on wings assembled in this corner of north Wales.
Novelists, naturalists and football on the Dee
Mold's Daniel Owen, born there in 1836, is often called the greatest Welsh-language novelist, and his book Rhys Lewis (1885) remains a classic. His statue stands in the town, and Mold's Theatr Clwyd, opened in 1976, is one of Wales's best-known theatres. Thomas Pennant, of Downing near Whitford, was an 18th-century naturalist whose travel books on Wales and Scotland made him a household name among curious readers of his day. Football is a strong local passion, with Connah's Quay Nomads, Flint Town United and Airbus UK Broughton all flying the county's flag in the Welsh pyramid. To the north, at Point of Ayr, mainland Wales ends at the Talacre dunes, where the old lighthouse stands on the sand.