THE STORY
A market town with character
Our hotel
Exploring the town centre
Old Oswestry Iron Age Fort
Other places within easy reach:
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A market town with character
Some country towns manage to retain something of their distinctive character despite the onslaught of new roads, town centre redevelopments and national retailers. It seemed to us, from our short visit in April 2004, that Oswestry had achieved this. There are enough historic buildings still standing, and the town centre still retains a human scale with local shops and tea rooms. It’s not such a big place that you can’t walk around it comfortably in half a day, and the busy Wednesday market gives a midweek boost to local traders.
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Our hotel
We were staying in the historic Wynnstay Hotel, now part of the Best Western Group, in the southern part of the town centre facing the parish church of St Oswald. With a confusing maze of streets, we soon worked out that we could use the tall church tower to navigate our way back to the hotel. The hotel is an old coaching inn with spacious rooms, notable for a delightful bowling green at the back and a leisure centre with pool and gym on the other side. There was plenty of parking at the back as well. We enjoyed the food, the atmosphere of the bar, the service, and the comfortable bedrooms.
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Exploring the town centre
From here we were able to walk around the church grounds, and across the churchyard to Holbache House, originally a grammar school established around 1406. It’s now a heritage centre and tea rooms, where we bought the Town Trail and Brief History booklet used for our tour of the town centre. There's a tidy park just beyond the church, which we crossed on our first walk into the town centre.
However, the most direct route into town was to turn right outside the hotel, along Church Street, and we soon reached The Cross where streets led diagonally to the right and left, with the historic heart of the town straight ahead. This central area is dominated by the Castle Motte, with steps leading up to it and space at the top to enjoy the view over the town.
It’s the starting point for the Town Trail, and the booklet says this “is all that remains of a castle that was an important link in the chain of fortification created by the Normans along the Welsh border.” So, it must be getting on for a thousand years old, but it was knocked about a lot during various border conflicts and the English Civil War and there’s only the remnants of the walls to see now.
From the walls we could look down on the market stalls set up in the area below the castle motte, where we had bought a couple of small souvenir items. It was difficult, however, keeping track of a party of 10 people walking through the busy market area which spread into adjoining streets, and we had to resort to mobile phones to get everyone together again at the foot of the steps up to the motte.
We then embarked on a tour of more of the old streets of the town, using the Town Trail booklet as our guide, noticing some of the buildings that have survived for three or four centuries. To the west of the centre there are buildings dating only as far back as the railway era, but even these are now converted to other uses as the branch line through Oswestry has closed. The railway had brought a rapid expansion in the town’s population at the end of the 19th century, but the branch line was closed in the 1960s.
On our way back to our hotel we called in at one of the old pubs for a pint, and we also found a fascinating antiques centre occupying a former church building.
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Old Oswestry Iron Age Fort
Next morning I went out for a short run from the hotel before breakfast, through the centre of the town and out to the north, past the bus station to where two main roads merge alongside the old Cambrian railway works. Just past this junction on the left was the start of Llwyn Road which led towards Old Oswestry hill fort. First I turned off into a park on the right, and up a wooded ridge, where I realised that this wasn’t the way to the fort and turned back down to the road.
I turned right to continue along to the west side of the high embankment that was Old Oswestry. There was a track leading up onto the ridge, and I could soon see what an extensive set of fortifications it was, creating a great circular space with more earthworks within it. Way back in the Iron Age, this must have been quite a settlement!
Although I didn't have a camera with me on the run, I took a couple of photos on the way back from Gobowen station after dropping off other members of the party to catch their trains home.
According to the Town Trail & Brief History booklet, this “magnificent Iron Age hillfort” is “thought to have been occupied for about 500 years before the Roman invasion [and] Old Oswestry is the best example of its kind in the Welsh Marches and one of the best in England.” A great place to visit for people like me, who wallow in the atmosphere of ancient historical sites, but probably less fascinating to today’s younger generation. Although, who knows, with the popularity of Tony Robinson’s “Time Team” series on the television? You don’t have to dig a trench here to see the evidence of long-gone habitation.
But this was never the centre of ancient Oswestry – the first written records of which date from the 7th century AD. It wasn’t until the Norman castle was built in the 11th century that the town began to develop, and the town was burnt a couple of times in border battles before it achieved some prosperity with the wool trade in the 15th century.
After a full circuit of the earthworks, I returned to the road and found a footpath on the other side that ran diagonally through a field back towards Oswestry. This took me into the residential streets on the north side of the town and it didn’t take long to run through the centre and back to the hotel.
From the Wynnstay Hotel, this was a distance of about 3 miles (5 km), maybe a little more – but less from the town centre. It could be walked easily in a couple of hours.
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Other places within easy reach
I also had a drive out to the Old Racecourse just over two miles west along the B4580. It would make a good highlight on a circular walk from the town, maybe 6 miles around, using quieter roads and the network of paths marked on the OS map. The line of the racecourse is still clear, and there are information panels giving the history of the place.
Apparently "this hilltop, known as Cym y Bwch (Horns of the Buck), formed the site of the Oswestry Racecourse where the Welsh and English squirearchy held an annual race meeting from early in the 1700s until 1848. Before the races, chains were slung across the road that separates the South and North Common (where the races took place) to stop carriages and other vehicles from interfering with the running. Turf was then laid over the road surface to prevent the horses from slipping during the races. The present course was laid in Cumberland turf by French prisoners of war during the Napoleonic wars." Fascinating stuff.
What's more, " Racing over the figure-of-eight course was usually over four miles (two circuits) and was accompanied by much betting, drinking, begging and picking of pockets. The race week included a Grand Ball at the Wynnstay Hotel and many other social events including a mixed bill at the town theatre.....Today visitors can walk the former course and visualise the horses and the riders' silks, and almost hear the thunder of the horses' hooves and the cries of the crowd."
The other half of the information panel describes some interesting aspects of the ecology of the racecourse, which provides a home to "a good range of breeding birds typical of the Welsh border."
There are fine views east to Oswestry and across the Shropshire plain, and from the other side the hills of Wales create a wilder landscape, so that you can get a real sense of being on the border right here. Not surprisingly, Offa’s Dyke runs through the racecourse, and more background is given in the Offa’s Dyke story.
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We didn’t explore far into Wales, but after stopping to see the Old Racecourse I thought I’d have a short drive over the border and followed the road down to Llansilin – just a collection of houses round a road junction and a pub. The landscape was quite a contrast to the countryside east of Oswestry (see panorama below). Then I turned back east, through a little valley over to Croesau Bach, and on to Oswestry. It gave a strong hint of the excellent hill country that lay to the west, where there must be many good walks through peaceful countryside.
To the south of Oswestry, the villages of Morda, Trefonen and Treflach are within reach on foot, up to four miles away, again using tracks across fields combined with the quiet roads. Around here though, it’s easy to get confused between one field and the next, so a map and compass are just as valuable as on a hike over the hills.
We also enjoyed a half day visit to Park Hall open farm just a couple of miles north-east of the centre of Oswestry, which had extensive indoor areas with farm animals to see, milking to watch, and feeding of sheep to assist with. We were able to walk around the outdoor paddocks to see livestock grazing, and a tractor and trailer ride took us on a longer tour of the fields. There was a large indoor eating area as well.
Whittington Castle is another striking historic monument, two miles east of Oswestry, which you can’t miss as the A495 bends sharply round it. It is managed by a local community trust, and its website claims that this is unique in the UK, which sounds great. If we had a bit longer, I'd have liked to have explored it. However, not everyone in the family was keen on a castle visit - we were on our way to Colemere Country Park for a walk, and didn’t stop off.
Contributed by: Andrew Llanwarne
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