Coleshill was a historic administrative division of
Flintshire
Flintshire () is a county in the north-east of Wales. It borders the Irish Sea to the north, the Dee Estuary to the north-east, the English county of Cheshire to the east, Wrexham County Borough to the south, and Denbighshire to the west. ...
,
Wales
Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...
.
It was recorded 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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...
as the
vill of "Coleselt" and as "Coleshull" by
Gerald of Wales.
[Edwards, G. J. "Henry II and the Fight at Coleshill" in '' Welsh History Review'', v3, 3 (1967), 257 ][Davies, E. (1959) ''Flintshire Place-names'', UWP, p.39 ] The name is of
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
origin, with the first element probably being the personal name ''Col''.
[Davies (1959), p.40 ]
The vill boundaries were perpetuated as those of Coleshill Fawr and Coleshill Fechan
townships, which lay in Holywell parish north-west of the borough of
Flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...
;
[ Coleshill also subsequently gave its name to a commote, and later a ]hundred
100 or one hundred (Roman numerals, Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 (number), 99 and preceding 101 (number), 101.
In mathematics
100 is the square of 10 (number), 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standar ...
, of Flintshire.[Edwards (1967), 260] A Welsh form of the name, ''Cwnsyllt'', was sometimes used. [Davies (1959) p.44
] The townships of Coleshill Fawr and Coleshill Fechan were eventually merged into the Borough of Flint in 1934.
Coleshill is well known as the site of the 1157 Battle of Coleshill, otherwise known (following Gerald of Wales) as Coleshill Wood or as the Battle of Ewloe
The Battle of Ewloe (also known as the Battle of Coleshill, Flintshire, Coleshill, or Counsylth, or Coleshille, or Cennadlog) was fought in July 1157 between the Anglo-Norman forces of King Henry II of England and an army led by the Welsh peopl ...
, in which an army of Henry II clashed with the forces of Owain Gwynedd. It was also supposedly the site of a battle in 1150 between Owain Gwynedd and Madog ap Maredudd of Powys, in which the latter was defeated.[ and is now used for one of the town's electoral wards.
]
References
{{reflist
History of Flintshire