Letter from Maes Glas (Greenfield)

Julie Brominicks

On the map a thin orange line divides it. Housing to the west of the B5121 and to the east, a green squiggle inset with blue blobs. Maes Glas (Greenfield) is a village and valley between Aber Dyfrdwy (the Dee Estuary) and the town of Treffynnon (Holywell).

“Holywell was buzzing when I was a kid” says Cerys, making me a hot chocolate in The Savoy. “But there’s been Youtubers up there. Interviewing youths in balaclavas, you know? Oh my God they made it look terrible. But the abbey’s beautiful.”

Treffynnon developed around a spring which formed when a chieftain decapitated his jilter Winefride in the seventh century, or so the story goes.

Winefride’s uncle fixed back her head, and a well around the spring became a pilgrimage site and still is.

“Every solstice the cardinal comes and there’s a procession. And after Appleby Fair you get the gypsies and their horses. It’s really important in gypsy culture” says Cerys, “it’s lovely that they come.”

In the twelfth century, Cistercian monks built Basingwerk Abbey which, (unlike the well) was destroyed in the Reformation.

“They were the first to channel the stream,” Sue points out the leat, “it supplied the guesthouses where
pilgrims stayed.”

Guides

I’ve joined one of 26 free guided walks organised by volunteer-run Prestatyn Walking Festival. Sue and Ken are my guides.

They explain that the Romans exported lead through the valley. That over subsequent centuries, dozens of industries harnessed the stream through terraced ponds, wheels and conduits, to produce goods ranging from ribbons and calamine to zinc and cement; and a lot of pollution to boot.

“They used coal latterly too” says Ken, who worked in the pits of Glasgow, Wigan and nearby Point of Ayr.

Does he miss the age of coal? “Not in terms of it making a comeback. You’ve got to move on. But people who were good at their work were looked up to, respected. I think that’s what people miss out on now.”

The cotton mill was six storeys high. “These were cathedrals of industry” says Sue. “Imagine what it would have looked like in the dark all lit up, it would have been a fascinating sight.

The copper mill was owned by Thomas Williams who had the mines at Amlwch. They called him Twm Chwarae Teg but he voted against the abolition of slavery so he wasn’t really.”

Maes Glas is now a heritage park. Herring gulls sail through the sky, their reflections caught in the water like so many fish.

People stroll, skate or ride through leafy shade. Here’s a guy with an Aldi bag. Boys scooping tadpoles. A kid playing footie with his Dad, a toddler clutching a bag of bird seed.

“You OK?” they all grin, by way of greeting. Here a pulley. There a wheel. Abbey ruins and factory relics reclaimed by trees and snapdragons.

It’s not easy to decipher what was what. Buildings were demolished, industries came and went. The cotton mill was replaced by a flour mill, then a wheelwright, then a brickworks. The copper mill became a soap factory.

“This road was cobbled and they wore clogs so you can imagine the sound ringing out as they all came to work,” says Sue.

She tells us that writers like Thomas Pennant described the valley. Samuel Johnson counted nineteen factories and Daniel Defoe assumed everyone was an alcoholic because there were so many pubs. “He’d never been to Glasgow” says Ken.

With most of our products now made overseas, pollution and exploitation of people and resources are invisible to those who choose not to look.

That story is told here alongside one of renewal. Foliage bursts from chimneys, swans and black-headed gulls float on ponds that wriggle with fish.

Here come volunteers with barrows of yellow iris. They’re restoring the top pond for fishing (for which permits are available from The Greenfield Valley Heritage Park.)

Sam, Josh, and Lawrence are local, Dom’s from Chester. It’s hard graft lifting, splitting and transplanting the iris, but they’re beaming.

Nature

“There’s rudd, roach, bream, perch, common carp,” says Dom. “My little lad is four, I want to introduce
him to it when he’s a bit older.

“It will be son and Dad time, no tech. I went through some really dark days as a teenager and fishing saved me. I hardly ever look at my phone. It’s just being in nature, the birdsong and everything.”

I duck in and out of the valley, curious about what’s at the edge. I find Liv on her knees in One Stop, stocking the fridge.

Customers come specially to speak to her in Cymraeg. “There’s a man in his eighties. I’m first-language English and it baffles me head, but I learned Welsh at school and I bloody love it!”

Across the road, a youth in a balaclava climbs off a bike with fat tyres and enters The Savoy, from where I hear peals of laughter from Cerys. “We haven’t seen you in ages!”

I go down to the dock, across the A548, past the Kingspan factory and D Fur Dog Grooming. Vetch and horsetails sway on the banks and the stream slinks through saltmarsh into silty Aber Dyfrdwy like a freshwater snake.

And I go up to the well where leaf shadows flicker like fish on the stone. A large family are gathered and I ask what language they’re speaking. “Irish” they reply and I’m confused because it doesn’t sound like Gaelic.

“Southern Irish” they clarify. A gypsy-traveller language? “Yes” says Martina, whose brothers are wading through the cold water.

Martina’s sunglasses dazzle. I mention the gypsies from Appleby. “They would be the English ones. The Irish come to the well on their way home. It’s very peaceful here. Wales is beautiful” she says.

Ducks glide around the cotton-mill culvert. Everywhere, damselflies and butterflies dart. Clouds of sparkling river- flies gust back and forth in an air current, some yo-yoing up and down, others whizzing.

Despite the drought, the gush of water between ponds is powerful enough to make the bridge timbers tremble.

To find out more visit https://www.prestatynwalkingfestival.co.uk/ 
and https://greenfieldvalley.com/