Flintshire 4 - Mold /Jasper Carrott and living in Mould /Daniel Owen and Siop y Siswrn

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There was once an excellent comedian named Jasper Carrott . Jasper came from the Midlands and toured around the country on the comedy circuit . He visited towns here and there talking about his town of Dudley which he pronounced in a black country accent and made fun of anything and everything . Those were the days before woke made it difficult to make fun of anything without offending . He raised a laugh when he shouted out that the inhabitants of Mold were unfortunate living in a place called Mould . Who would want to live in a place called Mould ? Sadly of course Mold sounds like Mould so it invited the joke from him . Laughing at yourself is an art we have sadly lost . Actually Mold is a nice place to live and a lovely place to work . I should know I worked there for seven years. It does not have any hills so everything is on the level . A small climb from the bottom of the town but nothing to write home about .

It has everything you could want from a small town . . Plenty of parking . Sadly though as far as I know not free. We parked on the local Tesco store where we could park up out of the way for two hours . This would give us plenty of time to walk up the only hill in Mold to the town centre with its busy High Street . Mold just has two main streets . One runs from east to west and the other from north to south . The meet at the traffic lights at the crossroads in the middle of town . It has an abundance of shops . Some chain stores but others independents . Goldsmiths the jeweller to go to for repairs . Building Societies and a handful of banks . Hulsons butchers shop where they sell the best pork pies for miles . You could get everything and more from the town centre and even a outdoor market one day a week .

We turned right onto the High Street and headed for coffee. Loads of choice from the usual Costa - there are other brands of coffee shops - to independents . We chose Gerrards and ordered our coffees and two sausage rolls . It was full downstairs despite it not being market day . We found plenty of room upstairs where we could sit by the window watching the world go by. It took a while to be served but that was nothing to moan about as it gave us plenty of time to sit looking out of the window . How long was it since I worked in Mold ? Ten years ago and yet it hardly seemed five minutes since I walked up the High Street during my lunchtimes to shop . Ten whole years had disappeared so quickly as I tried to remember the market . I wondered if it was still as good as it used to be . We chatted over coffee about how busy the street looked as people walked in to the travel agents and to the shoe shops . My saying this morning was churned out over that coffee . A saying of the Buddha " Each morning we are born again . What we do today is what matters most " Ok we think that is a good one and made the most of our trip out not far from home .

After coffee we walked slowly up to the town church . A grand medieval building St Marys dominates the top of the High Street . The graveyard was empty and lacking in tombstones. It looked as if some zealous vicar in the past had decided that the best way to look after the graveyard was to remove all the stones . Leaving just a vast expanse of grass . Shortsighted but normal for 30 or 40 years ago . Where were the gravestones located ? Had they been thrown away or had they been used as paving slabs ? There was no sign of them anywhere . Nor was there any light in the church . It looked as if our visit was going to come to nothing . I had been in the church ten years ago perhaps on one of those rare days that it was open in the week and remember it was impressive . It has historical associations with the Stanley family - the Earls of Derby. The church was dedicated to St Mary and as always stands on a much earlier site dating back to a Norman church facing what once was Mold castle .

That church fell into disrepair in the 14th century and was replaced by a larger one in the 15th century,. This one too fell into ruin and was demolished with the exception of the tower. The cycle of destroying and rebuilding continued as the church tried to meet the needs of the growing community . Construction of the present church began about 1490 with its first patron the Lady Margaret Beaufort . Yes the same Margaret who patronised many welsh churches in this area and was mother to Henry VII the first Tudor monarch . By 1674 a clock had been purchased and the roof releaded ,. New bells were acquired by 1733 and a gallery added around 1751 -1752. I remember it being a lovely light church inside with the old gallery now removed during Victorian alterations . It was such a shame it was locked as we wanted to see inside again . Standing outside we could see the church was built in the usual local Cefn sandstone and was the usual Perpendicular style . It seems nearly every church in this area looks and feels the same . It was impossible with no lights on inside to get any idea what the stained glass was like. After much standing we went over the road to catch a glimpse of the Bailey Hill.

The Bailey Hill is all the remains of the old Motte and Bailey castle with its Norman castle . Now a park we decided to give it a miss .

Time was flying by . Half an hour in the coffee shop. Another half an hour walking up to the church . We had an hour to make our final visit to a area of Mold before getting back to the car. Turning off the busy High Street we wandered into the arcades with more independent shops and an indoor market . It was bustling behind the scenes . I was heading for one of two Molds claims to fame . The first the Mold Gold Cape sadly displayed in the British Museum in London but found in a field in the town . The second Daniel Owen . Daniel was born in 1836 and was regarded as the foremost Welsh language novelist of the 19th century . A man who wrote in Welsh rather than English . He was working class and born into a family of six children . His father a coal miner whilst his mother had less humble beginnings being related to a family of poets and writers . He received as always a poor education as his father and two brothers died in a pit flooding in 1837. He was apprenticed to Angel Jones an elder in the local Calvanistic Methodist church . There apart from tailoring he began to write poetry and argue and discuss life with his colleagues and his customers .

Like many welshmen he began to write for the local eisteddfodau under the pseudonym Glaslwyn and published a few pieces . He then decided to change his life and turned to his religion unsuccessfully trying to train as a Having failed the course he returned to tailoring and preaching on a Sunday . He wrote Y Dreflan a fictionalized version of life in Mold . It was popular but it took a few years for his novels which were similar to Charles Dickens stories to take off . Charles Dickens with a welsh twist . His statue stand in a small insignificant back street square and I guess many pass it by without a thought about Molds literary son . It stands outside the library which seems fitting .




A further homage to Owen is the small welsh shop on the main street . Siop y Siswrn - the scissors shop . How many pass by and not realise that it is placed opposite the tailors shop he once worked at and hints at the man who brought welsh fiction to the masses . Daniel Owen - he even has a community centre named after him. But again like many things in Mold he has has been forgotten .

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