Mines, Moorland and Mountain

History

Wrexham County Borough Council made Mines, Moorland and Mountain because people had been asking it for a longer walk. It is a 15½-mile ramble for experienced walkers from Nant Mill Visitor Centre at Coedpoeth, up the Clywedog Valley and onto the heather moorland, climbing to 565 metres. The leaflet names its main stages as Nant Mill, Minera Lead Mines, Cyrn-y-Brain, World's End and Ruabon Mountain; shorter versions of 12½ and 8 miles leave out Cyrn-y-Brain and World's End, and the 8-mile route crosses Minera Mountain instead of Ruabon Mountain.

The mines of the walk's name are the Minera lead mines, which have been worked since at least the Middle Ages. The Minera Mining Company, formed by 1845 by John Taylor and Sons, mining agents from Flintshire, put in a new drainage level from Nant Mill and by 1852 was mining lead again; it judged the pumping engines too expensive to run in 1909, and lead mining stopped in 1914. The council's leaflet says 30 companies sank 50 shafts there in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and points out the restored Cornish beam engine house and, further on, a limestone quarry with the Hoffman kilns of 1868.