Overton a village in Wrexham County Borough now It wanted once to be in Shropshire . Why was that ? Well it was all to do with a detached part of Flintshire . An area miles away from the administrative centre of Mold split away by Denbighshire in between. An odd enclave known as the Maelor Saesneg - the English Maelor as opposed to the Welsh Maelor . They never got their wish . The county of Clwyd was formed and they belonged to a much bigger thing . They forgot their desire to an English county rather a welsh one .
It is the end of the year . 2020 has been a washout . A waste of time. A time of despair and desperation. A year when we have been unable to travel . All the adjectives we could think of made us feel no better about the year. 9 months of lockdown - what would the future hold/ Day 284 with no end in sight . Looking back there was nothing to say. Looking forward I wondered if January 2021 would just be more of the same . There is light at the end of the
As I walked the village past the reasonably new doctors surgery, the pharmacy and the post office I thought of the cold dark world of Covid . Walking , finding house numbers that fascinated me. Some things familiar and others unfamiliar . Flowers in the Spring . Summer flowers . The colours of Autumn. Overton appeared quiet but that was Covid. The ground was frosty white . The air chilly. 1 degree and white all over. The village looked pretty . An old and ancient village . The settlement is not mentioned in the Domesday Book but was first mentioned in 1195. Its name is derived from the settlement on the banks of the Dee. There was once a castle here built in the 12th century by Madog ap Maredudd, a prince of Powys:. It was granted the right to a weekly market and annual fair in 1279 by the English king Edward I.
I headed for my favourite place the church and the churchyard . The church is imposing and dominates the High Street . It is famous for its 21
very ancient yew trees. The trees are known as one of the Seven wonders of Wales . An old rhyme tells the story . Pistyll Rhaeadr and Wrexham steeple , Snowdons mountain without its people , Overton yew trees , St Winefride wells , Llangollen bridge and Gresford bells .
The yew trees were between 1500 and 2000 years old . They predated the church which was Norman. I walked around the trees in awe of their size . We are used to yews in a graveyard but these were truly venerable and made me feel humbled . They had seen history . They were small trees once and had seen kings and and go . It was hard standing beneath them with the rain dripping through them to imagine their ancientness .
As I stood deep in my own world I was aware of someone walking towards me . A local . He told me that he was a surveyor but part time he wound up the clock in the church tower . I thanked my lucky stars to be here at this time . Pure luck . I asked him if I could come
in with him . He took his large key and inserted it in the old iron lock . Come in he said as he donned his mask and opened up the cupboard holding the weights that he was going to wind back up the tower . The huge stones were at the bottom of their ropes and his job was to take them all back up again so that the clock would continue telling the time for another week .
The church was decorated for Christmas . He pointed me in the direction of the life size nativity scene . The carved miseracords on the end of the pews . He took me behind the organ to see the vibrant stained glass sadly hidden by the huge Victorian organ . Sadly the best glass was hidden out of view . He moved to the stones set in the floor and laid up against the wall , This a Norman stone from the original church. It was a circle cross and built into a west pillar of the nave. That something taken down during the Reformation . Sadly my photos did the interior no justice at all . I even tried to photograph the much older Abyssinian brass processional cross with a calendar stick in Indian script.
