Welsh Journals

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COPPER AND BRASS INDUSTRIES OF THE GREENFIELD VALLEY by KENNETH DAVIES, M.Sc., Dip.Ed., F.R.C.S. The Greenfield Valley lies between Holywell and Greenfield, 18 miles (29 kms.) west of Chester. It is a minor tributary for the Dee Estuary. Though the main valley is only one and a half miles long there are the ruins and remains of a great variety of industries including: copper and brass, iron, tin, lead, zinc, cotton, woollens, lime and cement, coal, gas, paper, brewing, soap and rubber grinding. Industries developed, prospered for a while causing population growth and then died leaving little trace except for decaying ruins and fragmentary documentary evidence. The Green- field Valley is now a pleasant wooded area with a few small industries: a bottling works, light engineering and a woollen mill near St. Winefride's Well at the southern end, and a paper mill near the ruins of Basingwerk Abbey at the northern end. Few people realise that there was once an important copper and brass industry here. But for the vagaries of the River Dee and the geological problems of the coalfield the Holywell Greenfield Bagillt area could have been like the Swansea Valley. All that now remains are the ivy-covered ruins and, more prominently, five of the ponds which formerly supplied the water to the waterwheels producing the power to turn the machinery in the factories. The loss of industries in the nineteenth century caused depression then but has resulted in a much smaller problem of dereliction now. The initial development was, probably, linked with the growth of the slave trade of the Liverpool ship-owners and traders. By 1700 ships from Liverpool seemed to have established a trading pattern with West Africa and America.1 In 1724 the Liverpool Merchants referred to the copper manufacturers as being dependent upon the slave trade. the manufacturers of cotton, woollen, 1 C. N. Parkinson, The Rise of the Port of Liverpool (1952), 89-90.