Wrexham County Borough 29 - Days 385,386,,387 and 388/On this day/The Kings Mill and the grabbing council

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Days 385,386,387 and 388 . I find myself as I walk as always thinking . Thinking back to last year . In a Steve Wright in the afternoon way I found myself thinking about what I was doing last year, the year before and the previous few years. So what was I doing this time last year? Not a lot. Special leave from work plus one week holiday when we could not go anywhere. It was not Easter this time last year . It was the weekend which included Palm Sunday . Easter would be a week later . Last year like this year we were going through a lovely Spring. A Spring of fantastic weather , sunshine , walking , sitting in the garden drinking wine. Well with time on our hands we had to do something . Even if we could not buy toilet rolls at least there was enough wine to keep us happy. I had planned to read Le Mis . It never happened. I thought to learn yoga at home . I never did manage much of that. A lot of things seemed like good ideas at the time . Some I managed to succeed in doing but others went into some kind of black hole never to surface again . Jigsaws - I did many . I wished I had kept the 10,000 piece one I had of Venice . That would have seen us through a month of lockdown . With each step taken on this lovely morning my thoughts flitted backwards and fowards .

Forwards to the banks of Wood Anemone that were opening up . Their petals closed until the sun came out fully. Holidays - cancelled last year . In doubt this year. Where were we two years ago I wondered? Confucious said that we "should study the past if we wanted to define the future". I like that thought I always liked looking back particularly at previous holidays. The old blogs as I read them make me smile. A year ago the Lido was closed to fishing . The church bells did not ring out. We went to Wollaton Hall trying out our new Sally Sat Nag. We were preparing for our four week holiday . Pereweltz was just around the corner .

I walked along the Clywedog - one of the tributaries that ran into the River Dee . The Clywedog along with the Alyn and the Gwenfro were the lifeblood of the Wrexham area. In the 18th and 19th centuries the river Clywedog was a powerhouse. 17 mills once graced the banks of the river on its journey from the Minera Lead Mines to the Kings Mill. Fulling mills serviing the cloth industry of the town. Mills for the grinding of corn and malt . Wrexham was famous for its beer. Border Breweries and Wrexham Lager. They have all gone as have the papermills that once graced the town . I thought of the river like a tired old lady waiting to go to a tea dance . The celandines that once covered her banks in gold had gone over replaced by the white of the Wild Garlic . She had shorn her yellow dance dress and was replacing it with a white one . My imagination was tending to go wild . She needed a new look for this weeks tea dance . The Clywedog would join its big sister the Dee 4 miles east of Wrexham .

I was standing outside the Kings Mill . It stands in the area known as Wrexham Regis. At the beginning of the 13th century the Lord of the Manor gave some of the land around the town to the local abbey. After that Wrexham was split into two parts . One was Wrexham Abbot - the name still living in one of the streets of the town - Abbot Street . The other part was Wrexham Regis named after the King. I had parked the car in a fairly large car park in what was now a sad and empty space . The mill was up for auction . The council who were hell bent on selling anything worthwhile had decided that the building which despite having been given to the community by the late Squire Yorke was surplus to requirements and needed to be sold off. A covenant on the building stated that the use must be for the benefit of the area and in the past had been used as a museum space . The visitor centre had been opened by Princess Diana in 1991 and closed and left unloved for the past 8 years. The mill machinery was still intact but the doors were barred so there was no chance of seeing what was inside . I wondered why the National Trust did not buy it back . The asking price was 165K - a drop in the ocean for them . It would be another pearl in its jewellery box of properties and with its connection to Erddig a worthy acquisition .

The mill had been originally built in the 14th century and rebuilt by Phillip Yorke in 1769. I stood by the leete that had once fed the huge waterwheel that turned the massive machinery. It wouldnt take much to get the leete back into working order . Nor would it take long for the carpenters at Erddig to produce a new waterwheel . Graffiti covered the mill walss and the old beehive kiln that I found hiding behind the mill buildings . The kiln was once used to fire bricks from the nearby Abenbury Brickworks. The Prince of Wales feathers adorned the front of the building . A large wooden structure once housed the lifting machinery that once lifted the grain to the top of the mill . As I looked up I thought of wooden structures like this in Austria and Switzerland . It stood out against a blue sky.

I had not needed to go far to find such a lovely but sadly neglected building . The auction was coming up and as I walked around the mill I wondered what the outcome would be.

PS - The auction failed to meet the reserve by £1000. The council did not sell it . So what happens next to this lovely building .

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