Hawarden, in Flintshire, lies 6 miles West of Chester, at a height of 250 feet, overlooking a large tract of Cheshire and the Estuary of the Dee. It is now in direct communication with the Railway world by the opening of the Hawarden and Wirral lines. It is also easily reached from Sandycroft Station, or from Queen’s Ferry, (1.5 m.) whence the Church is plainly seen or again from Broughton Hall Station (2.25m.). The Glynne Arms offers plain but comfortable accommodation. There are also some smaller hostelries, and a Coffee House called “The Welcome.”

The Village consists of a single street, about half a mile in length. Two Crosses formerly stood in it; the Upper and the Lower, destroyed in 1641. The site of the Lower Cross, at the eastern end, is marked by a Lime tree planted in 1742. Here stood the Parish Stocks, long since perished. More durable, but grotesque in its affectation of Grecian architecture, may be seen close by, the old House of Correction. This spot is still called the Cross Tree.

The Fountain opposite the Glynne Arms is designed as a Memorial of the Golden Wedding of the Right Hon. W. E. and Mrs. Gladstone. A little lower down is the new Police Office; and further on is the Institute, containing mineralogical and other specimens, together with a good popular library.

In Doomsday Book, Hawarden appears as a Lordship, with a church, two ploughlands half of one belonging to the church half an acre of meadow, a wood two leagues long and half a league broad. The whole was valued at 40 shillings; yet on all this were but four villeyns, six boors, and four slaves: so low was the state of population. It was a chief manor, and the capital one of the Hundred of Atiscross, extending from the Dee to the Vale of Clwyd, and forming part of Cheshire.

The name is variously spelt in the old records. In Doomsday Book it is Haordine; elsewhere it is Weorden or Haweorden, Harden, HaWordin, Hauwerthyn, Hawardin and Hawardine. It is pretty clearly derived from the Welsh Din or Dinas, castle on a hill (although some attribute to it a Saxon derivation), and was no doubt, like the mound called Truman’s Hill, west of the church, in the earliest times a British fortification.

No Welsh is spoken in Hawarden. By the construction of Offa’s Dyke about A.D. 790, stretching from the Dee to the Wye and passing westwards of Hawarden, the place came into the Kingdom of Mercia, and at the time of the Invasion from Normandy is found in the possession of the gallant Edwin. It would appear, however, from the following story, derived, according to Willett’s History of Hawarden, from a Saxon Ms., that in the tenth century the Welsh were in possession.

“In the sixth year of the reign of Conan, King of North Wales, there was in the Christian Temple at a place called Harden, in the Kingdom of North Wales, a Roodloft, in which was placed an image of the Virgin Mary, with a very large cross, which was in the hands of the image, called Holy Rood. About this time there happened a very hot and dry summer; so dry that there was not grass for the cattle; upon which most of the inhabitants went and prayed to the image or Holy Rood, that it would cause it to rain, but to no purpose. Among the rest, the Lady Trawst (whose husband’s name was Sytsylht, a nobleman and governor of Harden Castle) went to pray to the said Holy Rood, and she praying earnestly and long, the image or Holy Rood fell down upon her head and killed her; upon which a great uproar was raised, and it was concluded and resolved upon to try the said image for the murder of the said Lady Trawst, and a jury was summoned for this purpose, whose names were as follows:

Hincot of Hancot, Span of Mancot,
Leech and Leach, and Cumberbeach.
Peet and Pate, with Corbin of the gate,
Milling and Hughet, with Gill and Pughet.”

The Jury so continues the story found the Holy Rood guilty of wilful murder, and the sentence was proposed that she should be hanged. This was opposed by Span, who suggested that, as they wanted rain, it would be best to drown her. This, again, was objected to by Corbin, who advised to lay her on the sands of the river and see what became of her. This was done, with the result that the image was carried by the tide to some low land near the wall of Caerleon (supposed to be Chester) where it was found by the Cestrians drowned and dead, and by them buried at the gate where found, with this inscription:

The Jews their God did crucify,
The Hardeners theirs did drown,
’Cos, with their wants she’d not comply,
And lies under this cold stone.

Hence the said low land, or island, as it may have been, is supposed to have got the name of the Rood-Eye, or Roodee as at present.

After the Conquest, Hawarden was included in the vast grant made by William to his kinsman, Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, which included Cheshire and all the seaboard as far as Conway. The Earl had his residence at Chester, and there held his Courts and Parliament. His sword of dignity, referred to in the heading of Common Law Indictments, is preserved in the British Museum. Among the earliest residents at Hawarden occurs the name of Roger Fitzvalence, son of one of the Conqueror’s followers; subsequently it continued in the possession of the Earls of Chester till the death of Ranulf de Blundeville, the last earl, in 1231, when, with Castle Rising and the ‘Earl’s Half’ in Coventry, it passed, through his sister Mabel, to her descendants, the Montalts.

The Barons de Monte Alto, sometimes styled de Moaldis or Mohaut (now Mold, 6 miles from Hawarden, where the mound of the castle remains), were hereditary seneschals of Chester and lords of Mold. Roger de Montalt inherited Hawarden, Coventry, and Castle Rising, and married Julian, daughter of Roger de Clifford, Justiciary of Chester and North Wales, who was captured at the storming of the Castle by Llewelyn, in 1281. Robert de Montalt the last lord, died childless in 1329, when the barony became extinct. He it was who signed the celebrated letter to the Pope in 1300 as Dominus de Hawardyn.

Robert de Montalt bequeathed his estates to Isabella, Queen of Edward II., and Hawarden afterwards passed by exchange, in 1337, to Sir William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. From that family it reverted in 1406, by attainder, to the Crown, and in 1411 was granted by Henry IV. to his second son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Clarence dying without issue in 1420, it reverted once more to the Crown, but finally, in 1454, passed to Sir Thomas Stanley, Comptroller of the Household and afterwards Lord Stanley, whose son became the first Earl of Derby. In 1495, Henry VII. honoured Hawarden with a visit, and made some residence here for the amusement of stag-hunting, but his primary motive was to soothe the Earl (husband to Margaret, the King’s mother) after the ungrateful execution of his brother, Sir William Stanley.

Hawarden remained in the possession of the Stanleys for nearly 200 years. William, the sixth Earl, when advanced in years, surrendered the property to his son James, reserving to himself 1000 pounds a year, and retiring to a convenient house near the Dee, spent there the remainder of his life, and died in 1642. James, distinguished for his learning and gallantry, warmly espoused the cause first of Charles I. and afterwards that of his son. Under his roof Charles, when a fugitive, halted on his way from Chester to Denbigh, on Sep, 1645. After the battle of Worcester, in 1657, James was taken prisoner, tried by Court Martial, and executed at Bolton in the same year.

In 1653, the Lordship of Hawarden was purchased from the agents of sequestration by Serjeant (afterwards Chief Justice) Glynne; and in 1661 the sale was confirmed by Charles, Earl of Derby.

The Glynnes are first heard of at Glyn Llivon, in Carnarvonshire, in 1567. They trace their descent, however, much further back, to Cilmin Droed Dhu (Cilmin of the Black Foot), who came into Wales from the North of Britain with his uncle Mervyn, King of the Isle of Man, who married Esyllt, heiress of Conan, King of North Wales, about A.D. 830. The territory allotted to him extended from Carnarvon to beyond Clynnog. Edward Llwyd was the first to assume the name of Glynne, which his descendants continued till the male succession ended in John Glynne, whose daughter and heiress, Frances, married Thomas Wynne of Bodnau, created a baronet in 1742. His son, Sir John, is said to have pulled down the old strong mansion of Cilmin, and erected the present one. His son again, Sir Thomas, was created a Peer of Ireland for his services in the American war, whose descendant is the present Lord Newborough. The father of the Serjeant was Sir William Glynne, Knight, 21st in descent from Cilmin Droed Dhu. The Serjeant early espoused the cause of the popular party, perhaps rather from ambition than from principle. His abilities were soon recognized, and while still young he became High Steward of Westminster and Recorder of London. In 1640 he was elected Member for Westminster as a strong Presbyterian. He was actively concerned in conducting the charge against Lord Strafford. In 1646 he opposed in Parliament Cromwell’s Self-denying Ordinance, and was thrown into prison. He found means, however, to get reconciled to Cromwell in 1648, and became one of his Council and Serjeant-at-law. In 1654 he became Chamberlain of Chester, and in the following year succeeded Rolle as Lord Chief Justice which office he discharged with credit. In 1656 he was returned for Carnarvonshire, and in the Rump Parliament he sat again for Westminster. Meanwhile he contrived to ingratiate himself with the opposite side, and in 1660 we find him assisting on horseback at the coronation of Charles II. He now resigned the Chief Justiceship, made himself very useful in settling legal difficulties consequent upon the usurpation, and became as loyal as any cavalier: the King, as a mark of his favour, bestowing a baronetcy upon his son in 1661. He possessed Henley Park, in Surrey, and an estate at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, (of which church, as well as Ambrosden, he was patron) where the family resided. He died at his house in Westminster in 1666, and was buried in a vault beneath the altar of S. Margaret’s Church.

His son, Sir William Glynne, the first baronet, sat in Parliament for Woodstock, and died in 1721. It was not till 1723 that the Glynnes moved to Hawarden, from Bicester. An old stone records the building of a house in Broadlane in 1727. In 1732 Sir John Glynne, nephew of Sir William, married Honora Conway, co-heiress with her sister Catherine of the Ravenscrofts of Bretton and Broadlane, an old family connected with Hawarden for many generations. This lady was the great great grand-daughter of Sir Kenelm Digby, and with her one-half of the Ravenscroft lands came into possession of the Glynnes; the other half in Bretton passing eventually to the Grosvenors. She died in 1769. In 1752 Sir John built a new house at Broadlane, which has since been the residence of the family.

Though not the founder of the family, Sir John Glynne may fairly be considered the founder of the place, and of the estate in its modern sense. Though he sat for five Parliaments for the Borough of Flint, he devoted himself largely to domestic concerns and to the improvement of his property by inclosure, drainage, and otherwise. The present beauty of the Park is in a great measure due to his energy and foresight. Upon the acquisition of Broadlane Hall, he at once took in hand the re-planting of the demesne, first in Broadlane and about the Old Castle, and in 1747 on the Bilberry Hill. He also turned his attention to the developement of the minerals on the estate, and attempted the carriage of coals to Chester by water. He died in 1777.

His Grandson, Sir S. R. Glynne, married in 1806 the Hon. Mary Neville, daughter of Lord Braybrooke and of Catherine, sister to George, Marquess of Buckingham, and by her had four children: Stephen, eighth and last Baronet, born September 22, 1807; Henry, Rector of Hawarden born September 9th, 1810; Catherine, now Mrs. Gladstone, born January 6, 1812; and Mary, afterwards Lady Lyttelton, born July 22, 1813. He died in 1815 at the age of 35 years, and of his children Mrs. Gladstone alone survives. Sir Stephen, the last Baronet, died unmarried in 1874, surviving his brother the Rector only two years; and the Lordship of the Manor, together, by a family arrangement, with the estates, then devolved upon the present owner.