Pentre Broughton is a formerly industrial 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, tow ...
of
Broughton in
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 nort ...
, Wales. It is contiguous with the neighbouring 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 hor ...
and
Brynteg.
The village's name is derived from the Welsh word ''pentre'' ("village") along with Broughton, the name of the
township
A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries.
Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...
of the parish of Wrexham (later
Brymbo) in which it was located. The English place-name "Broughton" appears in the
Domesday Book
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 ...
survey of the area and probably means "brook town".
[Palmer, A. N. and Owen, E. ''A History of Ancient Tenures of Land in North Wales and the Marches'', 2nd ed, 1910, p.245]
Much of the village dates from the later 19th century, after industrial expansion in the area, but it appears on the 1873
Ordnance Survey
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of
Denbighshire
Denbighshire ( ; cy, Sir Ddinbych; ) is a county in the north-east of Wales. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name. This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewy ...
as "Pentre" and "Pentre isaf" ("lower village"). These place names, rather than "Pentre Broughton", appear on maps until the second half of the 20th century, and the village is still often referred to simply as "Pentre" by local residents.
Pentre Broughton's church, St. Paul's, was built in 1888–89, though it was not consecrated until 1909, shortly before Broughton was made a separate parish in its own right.
[Broughton, St. Paul]
GENUKI GENUKI is a genealogy web portal, run as a charitable trust. It "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland". It gives access to a large collection of information, with the emphas ...
The church was designed by the architect Howel Davies of Wrexham.
[St Paul's, Broughton]
Church Plans Online
Many of the villages' residents worked in coal mining, or in the
Brymbo Steelworks
The Brymbo Steel Works was a former large steelworks in the village of Brymbo near Wrexham, Wales. In operation between 1796 and 1990, it was significant on account of its founder, one of whose original blast furnace stacks remains on the site ...
which until its closure in 1990 dominated the view to the north of the village. The ''Cross Foxes'' on Pentre High Street was formerly the meeting place for the area's mineworkers' unions; at one 19th century meeting, over 6000 people gathered there for a demonstration.
[Cross Foxes]
North Wales Miners Association Trust
References
{{authority control
Villages in Wrexham County Borough