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Oswestry ( ; ) is a market town, civil parish and historic railway town in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads.

The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough of Oswestry until that was abolished in 2009. Oswestry is the third-largest town in Shropshire, following Telford and Shrewsbury. At the 2011 Census, the population was 17,105. The town is five miles (8 km) from the Welsh border and has a mixed English and Welsh heritage.

Oswestry is the largest settlement within the Oswestry Uplands, a designated natural area and national character area.

Toponym

The name ''Oswestry'' is first attested in 1191, as ''Oswaldestroe''. This Middle English name transparently derives from the Old English personal name Ōswald and the word ''trēow'' ('tree'). Thus the name seems once to have meant 'tree of a man called Ōswald'.A. D. Mills, ''A Dictionary of English Place Names'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), s.v. ''Oswestry'' . However, the traditional Welsh name for the town, (first attested in 1254), means 'Oswald's cross', and 'cross' is a possible meaning of Old English ''trēow''. Thus the town's name may have meant 'Oswald's cross' in both English and Welsh.

The Oswald mentioned is widely imagined to have been Oswald of Northumbria, who died at the Battle of Maserfield in 641/642. The location of the battle is debated among scholars, but for much of the twentieth century was assumed to be at Oswestry.Andrew Breeze, ''British Battles, 493-937'' (London: Anthem Press, 2020), ch. 9 . However, A. D. Mills's ''Dictionary of English Place Names'' concluded that 'the traditional connection with St Oswald, 7th-century king of Northumbria, is uncertain'.

The name and the association with King Oswald have attracted more fanciful interpretations. According to legend, one of the dismembered Oswald's arms was carried to an ash tree by a raven. Miracles were subsequently attributed to the tree, and the legend has it that this was "Oswald's Tree", and gave its name to the town. A spring called 'Oswald's Well' is supposed to have originated where the bird dropped the arm from the tree, though one historian has suggested that it was likely to have had sacred associations long before Oswald's time. The water from the well was believed to have healing properties, particularly for curing eye trouble. Offa's Dyke runs near the well, to the west.

There is an alternative view that Oswestry was named after Oswy, Oswald's brother, who fought a battle here against King Penda in 655 AD. Oswy became King of Northumbria after Oswald's death in 642 AD. The battle of 655 AD was fought near to a river called the Winwead, which it is believed, was the nearby River Vyrnwy. Welsh folklore has it that this battle was called the battle of Pengwern and in it their leader Cynddylan was also killed.

History

Prehistory

The earliest known human settlement in Oswestry is Old Oswestry, one of the best-preserved Iron Age hill forts in Britain, with evidence of construction and occupation between 800BC and 43AD. The site is known in Welsh as ''Caer Ogyrfan'', meaning 'City of Gogyrfan', referring to the father of Guinevere in Arthurian legend.

Saxon times

The Battle of Maserfield is widely thought to have been fought at Oswestry in 641 or 642, between the Anglo-Saxon kings Penda of Mercia and Oswald of Northumbria. However, the location of the battle is debated among scholars.

The Conquest

The Domesday Book (1086) records the castle being built by Rainald, a Norman Sheriff of Shropshire: ().

Alan fitz Flaad (died c.1120), a Breton knight, was granted the feudal barony of Oswestry by King Henry I who, soon after his accession, invited Alan to England with other Breton friends, and gave him forfeited lands in Norfolk and Shropshire, including some which had previously belonged to Ernulf de Hesdin (killed at Antioch while on crusade) and Robert of Bellême.

Alan's duties to the Crown included supervision of the Welsh border. He also founded Sporle Priory in Norfolk. He married Ada or Adeline, daughter of Ernulf de Hesdin. Their eldest son William FitzAlan was made High Sheriff of Shropshire by King Stephen in 1137. He married a niece of Robert of Gloucester. Alan's younger son, Walter, travelled to Scotland in the train of King David I, Walter becoming the first hereditary Steward of Scotland and ancestor of the Stewart Royal family.

Border town

The town changed hands between the English and the Welsh a number of times during the Middle Ages and still retains some Welsh-language street and place names. In 1972, ITV broadcast a television report asking residents if they thought the town should be English or Welsh, with mixed responses.

In 1149 the castle was captured by Madog ap Maredudd during 'The Anarchy', and it remained in Welsh hands until 1157. Occasionally in the 13th century it is referred to in official records as ''Blancmuster'' (1233) or ''Blancmostre'' (1272), meaning "White Minster". Later, Oswestry was attacked by the forces of Welsh rebel leader Owain Glyndŵr during the early years of his rebellion against the English King Henry IV in 1400; it became known as ''Pentrepoeth'' or "hot village" as it was burned and nearly totally destroyed by the Welsh. The castle was reduced to a pile of rocks during the English Civil War.

The town is now the home of the Shropshire libraries' Welsh Collection.

Market town

In 1190 the town was granted the right to hold a market each Wednesday. The town built walls for protection, but these were torn down in the English Civil War by the Parliamentarians after they took the town from the Royalists after a brief siege on 22 June 1644, leaving only the Newgate Pillar visible today.

After the foot and mouth outbreak in the late 1960s the animal market was moved out of the town centre. In the 1990s, a statue of a shepherd and sheep was installed in the market square as a memorial to the history of the market site.

Military

Park Hall, a mile east of the town, was taken over by the Army during World War I in 1915 and used as a training camp and military hospital. On 26 December 1918 it burnt to the ground following an electrical fault. The ruined hall and camp remained derelict between the wars, the camp hospital, however, was still in use; the Baschurch Convalescent and Surgical Home moved there in February 1921 and it became known as the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital.

One of the main uses of the land from the 1920s was for motorcycle racing and it became quite a well-known circuit.

The camp was reactivated in July 1939 for Royal Artillery training and the Plotting Officers' School. Following World War II, Oswestry was a prominent military centre for Canadian troops, then for the British Royal Artillery, and finally a training centre for 15 to 17-year-old Infantry Junior Leaders. The camp closed in 1975. During the 1970s some local licensed wildfowlers discharged their shotguns at some passing ducks and were shot themselves by a young military guard, who had mistaken them for an attacking IRA force.

The area previously occupied by the Park Hall military camp is now mainly residential and agricultural land, with a small number of light industrial units. Park Hall Farm became a visitor attraction in 1998, it is home to the Museum of the Welsh Guards. The Park Hall Football Stadium (home of The New Saints FC) and The Venue is now closed.

Landmarks

Old Oswestry, situated on the northern edge of the town, dominates the northern and eastern approaches. The 3,000-year-old settlement is one of the most spectacular and best preserved Iron Age hill forts in Britain, with evidence of construction and occupation between 800 BC and AD 43.

Other attractions in and around Oswestry include: Park, Shelf Bank, Wilfred Owen Green, Saint Oswald's Well at Maserfield, Oswestry Castle, and the Cambrian Railway Museum located near the former railway station. Oswestry Guildhall, the meeting place of Oswestry Town Council, was completed in 1893.

A story incorporating the names of all of the many pubs once open in Oswestry can be found hanging on a wall inside The Oak Inn on Church Street. There is a tapestry of 40 Oswestry pub signs on display in Oswestry Guildhall on the Bailey Head. The Stonehouse Brewery was opened in 2007, on the site of the former Weston Wharf railway station at Weston, in nearby Oswestry Rural; Stonehouse Brewery supplies many of the pubs with real ale.

Brogyntyn Hall, which belonged until recently to the Lords Harlech, lies just outside the town. Brogyntyn Park is five and a half acres of parkland occupying the southern slope of the Grade II listed Brogyntyn Estate. It was gifted to Oswestry Town Council by the fourth Lord Harlech, William Ormsby-Gore, on 11 August 1952.

Culture

There is a range of arts related activities in the town.

* The Qube
* Oswestry Visitor & Exhibition Centre
* Willow Gallery
* The Oswestry Town Museum
* Cambrian Railways Museum
* Attfield Theatre
* Fusion Arts organises arts and music activities for young people.
* Kinokulture, a cinema
* Hermon Chapel Arts Centre
* Oswestry Choral Society, the Oswestry Recorded Music Society, and the Oswestry Ladies Choir has developed.
* OsRocks Choir
* Wilfred Owen Green
* Borderlines Film Festival
* The Oswestry Food and Drink Festival
* Oswestry Balloon Festival
* The Whittington International Chamber Music Festival

Religion

In the 2011 Census, 68.7% of the population of Shropshire stated that their religion was 'Christian'. The second largest group (22.8%) stated that they had 'no religion'.

There are a number of places of worship in Oswestry.

Oswestry is divided into two Church of England parishes, which are part of the Diocese of Lichfield: Holy Trinity, which encompasses Oswestry East and eastern part of Oswestry Rural; and St. Oswald, which encompasses Oswestry South, Oswestry West and the western part of Oswestry Rural. Each parish has its own parish church.

St Oswald's Church was first mentioned in the 1085 Domesday book and a tithe document in Shrewsbury the same year. St Oswald's Church is Grade II* listed, having a tower dating from late 12th or early 13th century and later additions particularly in the 17th and 19th centuries. There is a new window in the east nave, designed by stained glass artist Jane Gray in 2004.

In June 2022, it was announced that, from January 2023, oversight of traditional Catholics within the Anglican Church in the west of Province of Canterbury (formerly the Bishop of Ebbsfleet's area) would be taken by a new Bishop of Oswestry, suffragan to the Bishop of Lichfield. The Bishop of Oswestry is to serve the western 13 dioceses of the southern province (Bath and Wells, Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Exeter, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield, Oxford, Salisbury, Truro, and Worcester).

The town of Oswestry and surrounding villages fall into the parish of Our Lady Help of Christians and St Oswald, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shrewsbury. The single Catholic church is Our Lady and St Oswald's Catholic Church. There is an associated primary school.

There are two Methodist churches: the Horeb Church on Victoria Road and the Oswestry Methodist Church. Cornerstone Baptist Church is on the corner of Lower Brook Street and Roft Street in a modern 1970s building. Other Nonconformist churches include the Albert Road Evangelical Church, Hope Church (formerly Church, ), founded in 1964, and the Cabin Lane Church, established by members of the Hope Church in 1991 following the eastern expansion of Oswestry.

Christ Church, formerly Congregationalist but now shared by the United Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church of Wales, was the home church of the composer Walford Davies, who sang in the choir. There is a Welsh-speaking church, the Church, and the Holy Anglican Church, a Western Rite Anglican establishment. Coney Green has a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall. The Religious Society of Friends also holds meetings in Oswestry. The Grade II* star Hermon Chapel, by chapel architect Thomas Thomas, was a Welsh-speaking Congregational church and is now an arts and community centre.

A small Muslim community exists in the town. A plan to transform a 19th-century former Presbyterian church on Oswald Road into a permanent base for meetings and prayer services fell through in March 2013 due to cost. New plans were submitted to Shropshire Council for approval in 2019, to convert the former Salvation Army citadel in King Street into an Islamic Prayer Centre. These plans were eventually approved by Shropshire Council.

There is a small Orthodox Christian community in Oswestry, which has increased in size over years due to the town's growing Bulgarian community. There is no Orthodox church in Oswestry, however, so congregants have to travel to the Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Fathers of Nicaea, Shrewsbury, to worship. There used to be an Orthodox outreach at Holy Trinity Church for a few years, but a disagreement over the church layout brought this service to an end. Congregants also used to benefit from a Greek Orthodox priest at Weston Rhyn, who left the area in the 1990s.

Healthcare

The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust in Oswestry provides elective orthopaedic surgery and musculoskeletal medical services. The hospital is located towards Gobowen.

There is a Health Centre on Thomas Savin Road, next to Shelf Bank and opposite the bus station. Within the Health Centre is the Oswestry Minor Injuries Unit, Cambrian Medical Centre and a range of services run by Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust. There are three other GP surgeries situated within the town, and numerous opticians, pharmacists and dentists.

Education

Oswestry is home to the second oldest 'free' (which in this context means not linked to any ecclesiastical foundation) school in the country, Oswestry School, which was founded in 1407. (The oldest, Winchester College, was founded in 1382.) Oswestry School's 15th century site, adjacent to St Oswald's Parish Church, is now a heritage centre, housing the Tourist Information Centre, Shropshire Poacher Coffee Shop, and exhibitions.

There are four state primary schools in Oswestry: The Meadows Primary School, Cabin Lane; Woodside Primary School, Gittin Street; Holy Trinity C.E. Primary Academy & Nursery, Beech Grove and Middleton Road; and Our Lady & St. Oswald's Catholic Primary School, Upper Brook Street. There is also an independent co-educational preparatory school in Church Street, Bellan House, which is run by Oswestry School.

Secondary education is provided by both Oswestry School and the state secondary school with academy status: The Marches School, Morda Road.

Further education is provided by The Marches School's Sixth Form and the North Shropshire College which is situated in the town at Shrewsbury Road and at the Walford Campus near Baschurch.

Transport

Oswestry is at the junction of the A5 with the A483 and A495. The A5 continues from Shrewsbury to the north, passing the town, before turning west near Chirk and entering Wales.

Bus services are operated by Arriva Midlands and local independents Tanat Valley Coaches

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