Wrexham County Borough 82 - a mix up on the days/why is town deserted? /a walk that brought back memories

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Town - the city seemed empty this morning . I parked the car up as I usually did in the supermarket car park . There were folks about doing their early morning shopping but the roads seemed suspiciously quiet . What is it about this sort of morning that makes you think it feels odd but you just cannot put your finger on it . I walked across to the swimming baths . I never noticed the lights were not on but what I did notice was the fact that there seemed to be no young ladies going in for spin classes or the gym. Neither was there any groups of youngsters milling around after the swimming club session . The doors were firmly locked and I just could not get a hang on why. I made a decision . It did not look as if the pool was opening anytime soon so I could go home , have a coffee and go for a walk or instead wander round Wrexham and take it the places I had not wandered down for some while .

Yorke Street named after Squires Yorke of Erddig was deathly quiet . I passed the Fat Boar a sponsor of the local football club . A boar stencilled on the wall showed it was a pub . I found myself remembering walking to my grandparents home in the late 50's with my dad . In the back of my mind I could visualise the tall houses that once lined Yorke Street . Long gone they had been replaced by a grassy bank which in turn had been replaced with up market apartments . I recalled dad talking of his childhood in the Irish Catholic part of the town . A childhood spent in the dark and gloomy courts named McDermotts Court or Browns Court. He grew up in the proximity of the Nags Head pub the home of Wrexham Folk Club or at least it was the home a few years ago . His childhood would have been spent where now stands a Halfords . He would have heard and smelt the railway as the line ran overhead just a few hundreds yards away over a low bridge . He would have seen the shop that made fishing flies . I remembered the bridge and the shop too as they were there well into the 70's. He would have taken me down Rivulet Road , along the dirty Gwenfro. Affectionately known locally as the Gwenny it now runs clear and is full of trout .

I remember climbing the railway embankment and reaching Hightown . My walk today did not quite take me that way . It did take me past the Old Beast Market . Long gone and replaced by supermarkets , bingo halls and hairdressers . The smells I could remember . The cattle being brought in to market . Dad took me there whilst mum walked around the market . The buses stopped outside the old Victorian Salvation Army Hall . Things had changed over the years . The smell of the tanneries had gone . Monday was tannery and brewery smells day . The smell of hops pervaded the town and leather too. Wrexham was famous for its high quality leather but as is usual the industry declined and the smell of the tannery has long gone .

I walked up Tuttle Street . That always seemed a quaint name for a street . It used to be narrow and winding . Now it has been opened up and most of the old buildings demolished . Brewing began on this site in 1844. Across the town was the Wrexham Lager brewery . My memories of Tuttle Street were of the Cambrian Brewery whose buildings were not up market apartments . The gate pillars still stood . The swimming baths built by the town in 1901. Considered state of the art they were heated by the towns incinerators . I remember the entrance hall and the shiny tiles that lined the walls . The pool was small , a separate pool for males and females . Deep and slippery when you could not swim . The changing rooms clung to the sides with the saloon style swinging doors . The incinerator chimney still stands . Mareks chimney it was called at one time . The chimney is 120 high and towers above the town reminding us of its industrial and brewing heritage . It was Grade 2 listed and the local MP took it upon himself to aquire it for a nominal sum from the owners of Marstons brewery . Love it or hate it it stands to remind me of our heritage . The Ruabon red brick with the date and initials of the Soames family blazoned across it the chimney is one of the few things that town still has to remind itself of its past . Had it been left to the council the chimney built in 1894 would have gone the way of other buildings and been demolished . As I stood looking up it seemed a fine thing to preserve - a reminder of the swimming baths and the 19 breweries in the town .





My last stop was on the bridge over the Gwenny . I used to work at Willow House for the local electricity board . Long gone and replaced with small workshops and industrial units . On one side of the bridge an inscription I could not read . On the other a granite plaque reminding us who opened the bridge and opened up Salop Road . The old gasometers had gone too . Instead flats although someone had designed them in the round and they resembled the old gas holders . The new road cut through to Pen Y Bryn and a sculpture lined the hillside . I never knew what it was supposed to depict .

Time to wrap up the walk and head home . So why was the town so empty . It was a bank holiday and I had forgotten . Everything closed to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee . And it will be the same tomorrow .

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