Wrexham County Borough 18 Wrexham /a trip down memory lane/how many empty shops? / The miner and the steelman /the Channel tunnel link

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I had an excuse today to get in the car and go into town to pick up something other than groceries . I needed to pick up some pipe fittings and screws and this would give me the opportunity to visit the town I had not walked around for some years. I told myself my trip was essential .

I wondered what sort of surprises it would present me with . I wondered if I would be disapppinted in what I saw . I wanted to see my home town as a tourist would . With tourists eyes . To look at it the same way as I would a town or city I visited in Gabby .

The sad thing about going back to a place is that it sometimes does not live up to memories or expectations . I had grown up around these parts and had a vision in my head of the town in the 1950's and 1960's when I went on the bus every week with my gran. We had rituals . We did the same thing every week . We went in the same shops . A trip to the rent office in an old hotel . A hotel built in the Victorian era when the trains were filled with passengers who wanted to visit Wrexham. The Imperial Hotel - there you go it came to me . I remember the old balcony and the shape of the building . Nothing left of it now .It was built into a corner and oddly shaped .

We continued to the Post Office . A massive Victorian edifice with a huge hall filled with massive windows and glass counters where the clerks waited for customers who wanted to buy stamps and postal orders . The building remains . It has been a Jobcentre , an extension to the Town Hall . Now I wasnt sure what it was .

The Royal Bank of Scotland closed . The town this end looked sadly derelict with empty shops and with Covid not a lot of footfall. Mum and gran would have recognised some of it but would have been appalled at the emptiness .

I parked up on Llwyn Isaf on the car park which now stood on the gardens of the local vicars pile . I fed the machine with a £1 coin which gave me a ticket for one hours parking . I thought an hour walking in the cold would be plenty . It was not as if I would get lost . I knew the town too well . I couldnt stop for a coffee . All the coffee shops were closed .

I made my way up to the junction of Egerton Street and Lord Street and I stood at the side of the steel statue commemorating the industry of the town .This was a new edition to the streetscape of my home town . It looked interesting and told the story of Steelmaking and Coalmining . The steel works at Brymbo were founded by the industrialist John ‘Iron Mad’ Wilkinson (1728–1808). He made his fortune pioneering the manufacture of cast iron goods. Following his successful iron smelting business locally and the invention of new technologies, steel production began on site from 1885 His business boomed over the following decades making him and the area prosperous . Sadly though like many of the heavy industries in the 1970's the industry declined and production ceased in 1990. The site in Brymbo as abandoned and the only clues to steelmaking in the town this statue I was standing before . The proud miner stood opposite It looked as if they were at either end pulling an arch together . The miner too looked like he was clinging on to an industry long gone . When I was a child there were pits all around the town . Now none remain . Just this reminder of that heritage . I found out it was named the Arc and around it a poem commemorating the miner and the steelworker. .I wondered how many wandered past it by without a thought .

I walked towards the "new" library . A building that replaced the beautiful older building on Queen Street . New if you count the 1970's as new . It replaced a much nicer building . The Victorians knew how to build . Sadly I felt modern WRexham fell down on so many scores .

The old boys grammar school was now attached to the new Coleg Cambria . Not a bad marriage between red brick and modern glass . The old girls school abandoned. The windows covered in metal to prevent intruders . The grounds once well loved were neglected . The 60's Science Block demolished . The old police station now gone too. I found myself reminiscing and missing so much of the towns history .

I wandered down to the High Street . The old markets looked closed, . Covid was closing everything . There were few people about . The old passageways to the markets were closed . Barriers across the doorways . Were they permanently closed or just a temporary thing . The only thatched pub in North Wales - The Horse and jockey closed and for let . I stood underneath the arch which once graced the science exhibition spaces . As I stood under I took a picture of the ceramic plaque . It commemorated many things about the town but the one that stuck out for me was the abortive attempt by Mr Lowe to dig a tunnel under the Channel to France . He drew up plans , he began to dig but the fear of french invasion meant the tunnel never got far beneath the water . It is still there under Dover - long forgotten . A wrexham man had an idea to link Britain and France . Just look how long it took to reach fruition .

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