Here’s a piece I wrote for Cwlwm magazine in January 2024
Quirky Chirky: welcome to the ‘wild west’ of northeast Wales
Tina Rogers traces the anarchic spirit of Chirk through a thousand years of people living on the border.
Half way up the hill and on the left-hand side from the English approach to the Welsh village of Chirk, is a large ornate sign saying ‘Croeso Y Cymru’ – Welcome to Wales, and as you gaze to the right, you’ll notice a large mound where a motte and Bailey once stood to keep the Saesneg/English OUT.
Chirk lies on the border of England and Wales, and is a most uniquely unusual place filled with contradictions.
Tottering on top of River Ceiriog the old Roman road (The A5) from Shrewsbury to London runs through it, making it a place that history has passed through wisp like for a thousand years, without leaving a real mark on the place and people. It remains individual.
Because of our location, the population of Chirk is misfit, neither one thing or another, not wholly Welsh (we all speak English and the is border a spit away) yet fiercely Patriotic (look around at all the houses adorned with Red Dragons and Welsh flags). A Welsh Village that may have been razed by our most beloved Welsh Prince Owain Glyndwr in the early 1400’s, because even Owain didn’t know what we were.
Chirk has been and is still a wild west border town, a long and wide main street perfect for a gun fight at dawn, where time stands still and only moves with its industry, once inhabited by ancient cowboys who once were coal miners, and now don’t look up from their mobile phones.
Chirk, Van Gogh Style
Its thought one of the earliest Welsh colliery’s was in Black Park (hence the name) from the mid-1600s, and when Thomas Telford built the A5 through Chirk, he brought the industrial revolution with him, removing its population from the fields and into the coal mines, opening the way for men and their families from other coal mines and areas to work here, leaving their odd ‘Dorset-Welsh’ accent alive in Black Park even now.
This movement on road, canal and rail allowed new hostelries to open, including the central building and beacon of Chirk, The Hand Hotel, to alleviate the stresses of ‘modern living’ with the introduction of Madam Geneva (gin) to the workers. A sentiment that has remained, work hard – play hard.
The Hand Hotel Chirk
Two world wars diminished the male population of Chirk who were lucky enough to escape the black seam for foreign shores. Coal was the back bone of Chirk from before memory, until Bersham pit, the main employer of men here, closed in 1986 after the miner’s strike. Grandfathers would work alongside their grandsons, generations of Chirk men with black eyes, blue scars and pneumoconiosis (black lung) from the dust, who now had no job, and no future.
The men lost their identity, generations of males diminished by Thatcher, so reviled by the miners families of Chirk, I wonder what my own father would think on seeing the very first Conservative MP voted in at the last general election.
Some miners secured a future in Chirks chocolate (Cadbury’s) or MDF (Kronospan). The Posh dads, ex miners who went to the grammar school but couldn’t escape their class managed to get work at the Chocolate factory, while Kronospan cast their nets wider than Chirk – To Austria where the company is based. Kronospan (hidden behind trees) is now larger than the town (seen from ariel photos its spans the whole length and more of Chirk), and is the most divisive entity in Chirk. Loved by those who work there, hated by others, there is no such thing as indifference here.
Where once our population looked towards the gentry of Brynkinallt (Home of the lord Trevor’s) and Chirk Castle (seat of the lord Myddelton’s) to doff caps and work in servitude, Kronospan has taken their place, as in early 2023, the Myddletons of Chirk Castle, doyens of Aristocracy, holder of Hunts and Balls since Elizabeth the First reigned – Sold their land to Kronospan.
Now Kronospan is king.
Chirk Castle in Summer
But there are other tasty morsels within the confines of Chirk, not many villages boast an 11th century Church and Norman Castle filled with treasures, built to subdue the Welsh (Someone tell Owain Glyndwr we’re on HIS side), also a Boys school, designed by Pugin (now a furniture shop) where Thomas E Thomas that Pioneer of Welsh Football taught Wales international and Manchester Utd Hero, Billy Meredith to pass the ball, a beautiful Elizabethan Stately home (Brynkinallt) containing Canaletto’s and the original family of Trevor’s who continue to work the land.
Artist Kyffin Williams lived here as a young lad (his dad was manager at the bank, which is now an air B&B), and poet R.S Thomas was the curate in the inter-war years, and gaze upon the beautiful Cenotaph that dominates central Chirk designed by artist, writer and alleged sexual deviant Eric Gill, it seems fitting for such a place of heroes and villains.
Monks Bridge, Chirk Bank
But these well knowns pale beside the ordinary people, the visceral beating heart of chirk. The good and bad, the strong women who kept life going when their men had no hope, the kids hanging around the chippy because there was, and is, nowhere else to go.
Let me tell you a story of Chirkers – as a child waiting for the school bus I spied John Cussy – a milkman so named (not John-the-milk) because he couldn’t pronounce custard. A kind, funny man with a retro 50’s candy floss duck’s arse hair style, who was shocked to be stopped in the middle of the road, quite near to the local MP’s house, early that morning by Ada Tay-ter (Potato), a matron of Chirk, she was only in her 20’s but looked ancient to me, like she’d roamed off the moors in 1320 Scotland, witch like, her ragged smock blowing like a galleon in the wind.
Ada was quite large and frightening, with thick lensed broken glasses and her husband’s unlaced work boots on and clutched between her fists were the handles of a silver cross Pram.
A pram full of stolen coal.
Probably from the MP’s house.
‘Help me home Cussy’, she said, ‘I can’t push this back it’s too heavy’.
Cussy – smiled, removed ALL the milk from his float, loaded the pram and Ada into it and drove away, leaving crates of dairy and cresta Pop on the A5.
There is no lesson to be learned from this story, other than a glimpse into the extraordinary occurrences and acceptance that was everyday life for the people of Chirk, a border town that defies categorisation, where the unusual was, and is, ordinary and where the heart of the village is fuelled by the anarchic spirit of its people.
