Historic Landscape Characterisation

Maelor Saesneg: Higher Lanes
Bronington and Willington Worthenbury communities, Wrexham County Borough
(HLCA 1126)

Dispersed farms on lanes running between strip fields and ridge and furrow of medieval open field origin.

Historic background

Key historic landscape characteristics

Fieldscapes are dominated by strip fields and reorganised strip fields, associated with a relatively high proportion of ridge and furrow, derived from medieval open field cultivation, with narrow lanes running between the fields. The numerous marl pits scattered across the area, now generally visible as ponds, probably represent post-enclosure land improvement. Modern land-use is predominantly pasture, field being bounded by mature mixed-species hedges and post and wire fences. Mature oak trees are scattered along existing hedgerows as well as denoting the course of former field boundaries across enlarged fields.

Few if any early manorial centres have been identified within the character area, settlement being predominantly based upon scattered lane-side farms and smallholdings, including ones such as The Woodlands, Lane Farm, and Boundary Farm which appear to post-date the enclosure of former open fields. An earlier building horizon is represented by the Brunett farmhouse, which in origin appears to have been a 17th-century timber-framed structure. Characteristic of the later buildings is Lane Farm, possibly originally an estate farm, with an early 19th-century brick-built farmhouse with gothic-style iron casement windows in the manner of those manufactured Wilkinson's Bersham foundry.

Sources