Mold

Mold (formerly Mould, Welsh Y Wyddgrug, a conspicuous barrow, Lat. Mons altus, the translation of the Welsh name), a market town, contributory parliamentary borough of Flintshire, N. Wales; on the London & North-Western railway (Chester and Denbigh branch), 182 m. from London and i i m. from Chester. Pop. of urban district (1901), 4263. The locality is populous owing to the collieries and lead-smelting works in the vicinity. At the north end of the town there is a height, Bailey Hill (perhaps from ballia, the architectural term applied to fortified castle courts). This hill, partly natural and partly artificial, was once the site of a Roman fortification, and in old records is known as Moaldes, Monhault, or Monthault (de monte alto). Mold Castle was probably built by Robert Monthault (temp. William Rufus), was taken and destroyed by Owen Gwynedd in 1144-1145, its site lost to the English and retaken by Llewelyn ap Iowerth in 1201, and by Gruffydd Llwyd in 1322. On this site, too, where there are now no remains of any fortress, were found, in 1849, some 15 skeletons, supposed to be of the 13th or 14th centuries. Maes Garmon (the battlefield of Germanus) is about a mile west of Mold. Here, as is supposed, the "Alleluia Victory" was gained over the Picts and Scots by Lupus and Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, according to some about A.D. 430, but others give A.D. 448, the date of the saint's death. A commemorative obelisk was erected on the Maes by N. Griffith of Rhual (1736). Over a mile south of Mold, on the right of the road to Nerquis, is the "Tower" (15th century, but perhaps restored in the 18th), where, in 1465 or 1 475, the royal chieftain, Rheinallt ab Gruffyd ad Bleddyn, hanged Robert Byrne, mayor of Chester, and subsequently burned alive some 200 Chester folk who tried to 'arrest him. Many tumuli are visible round Mold.

Mold county gaol, bought in 1880 by Jesuits expelled from France, was by them named St Germanus's House. St Mary's church, a Gothic building, is mentioned as early as the time of Henry VII. Its important collieries and lead mines; fire-brick, tile, earthenware, mineral oil, tinplate and nail manufactures, tanneries, breweries and malt-houses, have made Mold the business centre of the county. About 4 m. distant is Cilcain village, of which the church has a carved oak roof, stolen from Basingwerk Abbey at the dissolution of the monasteries. Among the neighbouring Clwyd hills Moel Fammau and Moel Arthur are specially noticeable. On the summit of the former is George III.'s jubilee pyramid. The Ordovices and the Romans fortified Moel Arthur. The sites of seven posts established against Rome may be traced along the hills bounding Flintshire and Denbighshire.