cashire, the district which his father had left to come to Bersham. Was this acquisition due to a sentimental reason that of wishing to live near the scenes of his youth, or did he then intend to begin extensive mining and manufacturing operations in the rich mineral district of Furness? Castlehead itself was an island at low tide, and was so called from an ancient camp which crowned it. Here Mr. Wilkinson built a large house, and laid out gardens and shrubberies, the soil for which had to be brought from the mainland in horsed panniers. Finally, Mr. Wilkinson had many shares in various tin mines in Cornwall.

I now come to speak of Mr. Wilkinson's estates, other than the leasehold estate of Bersham, within the old parish of Wrexham. I have already spoken of his having purchased MELIN BULESTON, or the Puleston Mills, which had before 1620 belonged to the Jeffreys, of Acton, and had afterwards passed into the possession of Mr. Griffith Speed, of Wrexham, from whom, or from whose widow Mr. Wilkinson bought it. It consisted of a mill, dwellinghouse, outhouses, mill pools, and 5 acres of land, ultimately increased to nearly 16 acres through the purchase by Mr. Wilkinson's executors of a portion of the Fawnog Fechan farm. He raised also, I believe in partnership with Mr. Richard Kirk (see History of Older Nonconformity of Wrexham, p. 88) enormous quantities of lead ore at CAE MYNYDD, MAES Y FFYNNON WEN, MARRIAN, EISTEDDFOD, and other places within the township of Minera, upon lands leased from James Topping, Esq., the Corporation of Chester, and from others, and spent large sums of money in laying down engines for pumping the water from the various mines sunk there. Hence also he derived most of the limestone which he required for fluxing his

ore.

But the largest estate which he acquired within the parish of Wrexham, and indeed, except that of Bradley, which he acquired anywhere, was that of BRYMBO HALL. This was purchased about the year 1793, of Thos. Assheton Smith, Esq., and Mrs. Jane Wynne, the representatives of the ancient owners of it. What was the size of the estate when he first came into possession of it, I do not know. If we take it to have included the Penrhos Mawr, Mount Sion, and Mount Pleasant farms, it would have amounted to about 500 acres. It was rich in coal and iron stone, and included the fine mansion of Brymbo Hall, which now formed one of the four houses which he occasionally occupied. This estate Mr. Wilkinson considerably enlarged so that it ultimately came to include, not merely the farms already mentioned, but also those after-named: -The Ffrith (281 acres); the Lower Glascoed (78 acres); Pentre'r Saeson (137 acres); Ffynnon y Cwrw (38 acres); The Waen (76 acres); Cefn Bychan (84 acres); and the Gorse (5 acres), bringing up the area to something like 872 acres. Of these farms some were purchased, and others, The Waen at any rate, were enclosed from the common. The following account from the Rev. Walter Davies' (Gwallter Mechain) General View of the Agriculture and Domestic Economy of North Wales (published in 1810) is worth copying :

"The late John Wilkinson, Esq., had a farm of about 500 acres1 at Brymbo, near Wrexham. The situation is bleak, and the soil naturally poor, being a hungry clay upon a substratum of yellow rammel or coal schist, which in some places appears in the clay. However, by good tillage, and manuring with lime at the rate of ten tons per acre, it is so far improved that the tithes of corn, within the township, have advanced £10 a year in value, owing exclusively to his improvements. He had brought under cultivation 150 acres of wild heath till then abounding only in springs and furze. A

1 That is about 500 acres in hand, as already explained.

crowned head had assisted him in making his compost manure. Offa King of Mercia, had employed men to bring together the soil; and Mr. Wilkinson went to the expense of lime to be mixed with it. Large cavities, of the shape of inverted cones, were cut at convenient distances in Offa's Dyke, which runs across Brymbo farm. The cavities were filled up with limestone and coal, and then burut in the same manner as the sod kilns in the vale of Clwyd."

To what base uses are the great monuments of the past often put! I may add that at the Brymbo farm Mr. Wilkinson erected a threshing machine, worked by steam, for he was an advanced agriculturist as well as a great iron-master.

On the Brymbo estate Mr. Wilkinson erected by the side of the Minera and Chester road, the lead smeltinghouse which is still in existence (although turned to other uses), sank various coal and iron stone pits, and built a couple of blast furnaces, of which one is still standing, and the other was only pulled down in 1892. These were supposed capable of making 4,000 tons of pig-iron in a year. He (or his trustees) made also the famous level, called "Y Level Fawr," which must be nearly two miles long, and which, starting from near Brymbo Hall, opens into the Glascoed Valley. It is a low tunnel, and on the floor are both a channel for draining the mines, and a narrow tramway along which trucks were brought from the workings freighted with coal. The latter was thus delivered at a point quite close to the main road from Minera to Chester. By 1829, 41 pits had been sunk on the Brymbo Hall estate.

It is a marvel that, in the absence of railways and even of good roads, one man should have been able to carry on profitably, at the same time, so many works, at such long distances apart. He could never have done so if he had not had, at each place, capable sub-managers whom he