Arowry ( cy, Yr Owredd) is a village in the

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, ...

of Hanmer in the rural south-east of

Wrexham County Borough Wrexham County Borough ( cy, Bwrdeistref Sirol Wrecsam) is a county borough, with city status, in the north-east of Wales. It borders England to the east and south-east, Powys to the south-west, Denbighshire to the west and Flintshire to the ...

, Wales, near the border with England. The origin of its name is unclear but is thought to have a Welsh-language root.Maelor Saesneg
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust. It has also been referred to as "Big Arowry", or "Great Arowry", in order to distinguish it from the hamlet of Little Arowry around a mile to the north near Horseman's Green. Alfred Palmer, the Wrexham historian, noted that the area called Arowry, before enclosure in the late 18th century, was a "great

heath A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler a ...

" sometimes given the Welsh name "Yr Owredd", and colloquially referred to as "the Rowrey", or "the Arowry".Palmer, A. N. ''A History of Ancient Tenures of Land in North Wales and the Marches'', 1910, p.247 The form "Yr Owredd" was also the name of the mansion of landowner and poet

Dafydd ab Edmwnd Dafydd ap Edmwnd (fl. c. 1450–97) was one of the most prominent Welsh language poets of the Later Middle Ages. Life Dafydd was born into a family of Norman ancestry in Hanmer, in Flintshire (now Wrexham County Borough), north-east Wales. As a ...

, which once stood in the area, and was first recorded in c.1490 in the work of

Tudur Aled Tudur Aled (c. 1465 – 1525) was a late medieval Welsh poet, born in Llansannan, Denbighshire (Sir Ddinbych). He is regarded as a master of cynghanedd. Beginnings It is uncertain when Tudur Aled started to write poetry. A remark by him in his el ...

: the English form "Rowri Heath" is first recorded c.1699 by

Edward Lhuyd Edward Lhuyd FRS (; occasionally written Llwyd in line with modern Welsh orthography, 1660 – 30 June 1709) was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary. He is also named in a Latinate form as Eduardus Luidius. Life ...

.Davies, E. ''Flintshire Place-Names'', 1959, p. 5 While this might imply a Welsh origin to the name,

Thomas Gwynn Jones Professor Thomas Gwynn Jones C.B.E. (10 October 1871 – 7 March 1949), more widely known as T. Gwynn Jones, was a leading Wales, Welsh poet, scholar, literary critic, novelist, translator, and journalist who did important work in Welsh language ...

, in his discussion of Tudur Aled's work, suggested that the name ''Owredd'' was originally derived from a Welsh pronunciation of the English name "Overheath".T. Gwynn Jones, ''Gwaith Tudur Aled'', v.II Cardiff, 1926, p. 589 The commonland of the Arowry, along with several other commons in the area, was drained and enclosed following a 1774 petition by the local landowner Sir Walden Hanmer,''Journals of the House of Commons'', 1774, p. 111 afterwards becoming private farmland. A short distance to the east of the village is Arowry Moss, once known as Tir-y-gors, a 3

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...

lowland bog that has now become wooded over, although it remains a wildlife site of county importance. The nineteenth-century philologist Alexander John Ellis studied the

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

of a native of Arowry, John Heatley, as part of his work, published in ''On Early English Pronunciation'', on English dialects. The unusual dialect of the Hanmer area was later studied in the

Survey of English Dialects The Survey of English Dialects was undertaken between 1950 and 1961 under the direction of Professor Harold Orton of the English department of the University of Leeds. It aimed to collect the full range of speech in England and Wales before loc ...

. The village is near the A539 road and is west of the nearest major town, Whitchurch in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...

References

Villages in Wrexham County Borough {{Wrexham-geo-stub