Broughton ( cy, Brychdyn) is a

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, t ...

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 Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. It has an area of 469 hectares and had a population of 6,498 in the 2001 census, increasing to 7,454 at the 2011 Census. The area is dominated by the Moss Valley, which was known for its coal mining. Today it is operated as a country park, and there is a golf course of the same name in the vicinity.

History

Broughton was recorded in the reign of Henry VII as one of the townships of the manor of Eglwysegle (a name preserved in the area known as Eglwyseg near Llangollen), part of the lordship of Bromfield. The

Wrexham Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...

historian Alfred Neobard Palmer noted:

Three villages alled Broughtonare situated in that part of Wales which was settled by Englishmen. They appear in
Domesday Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...
as "Brochetune" or "Broctune," which can hardly mean anything else than "Brook-town". The brook which may have given the Bromfield Broughton its name is now almost always dry, but "Rhyd Broughton" (or Broughton ford) preserves the memory of it.Palmer, A. N. and Owen, E. ''A History of Ancient Tenures of Land in North Wales and the Marches'', 2nd ed, 1910, p.245

Under the ecclesiastical administration the township of Broughton was part of the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

of Wrexham, and later of

Brymbo Brymbo is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It lies in the hilly country to the west of Wrexham city, largely surrounded by farmland. At the 2001 Census, the population of the community area (including Brymbo village, ...

. Population changes led to it being made a parish in its own right in 1909. The corresponding

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Broughton, which was ultimately based on the boundaries of the ancient township, became the community of Broughton under the terms of the

Local Government Act 1972 The Local Government Act 1972 (c. 70) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant Acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Gov ...

. It today contains the villages of

Moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta ('' sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and ...

, Pentre Broughton, Brynteg, New Broughton, Southsea and Caego. The majority of the villages date from the 19th century, when the area became heavily industrialised through

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

and its proximity to the Brymbo Steelworks. A number of coal mines were located in the area known as Moss Valley, along with a number in Pentre Broughton near

such as the Brynmally and Pwll Cadi collieries. Most of the area's coal mines had closed by the 1930s and the Moss Valley has now been reclaimed as a park. Continuing development has urbanised much of the rest of the community's area, with some agricultural land remaining in the south and east. The Moss Valley Golf Club was built in the 1980s by five designers, and was initially run by the local council.

References

* Davies, John; Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines & Peredur I. Lynch (2008) ''The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales'', University of Wales Press, Cardiff.

External links

Broughton community website
{{Wrexham Communities in Wrexham County Borough The Lordship of Bromfield and Yale