About the Range
Recent News & Events
Minister confirms AONB designation for the Dee Valley
22.11.2011
Loggerheads hoists its Green Flag as one of the best !
28.07.2011
Clwydian Range AONB Award goes to the Raven Inn.
19.07.2011
Historic Landscape
The landscape of the Clwydian Range, its breath taking beauty and character has been produced by generations occupying and working the land.
What we see around us is a product of thousands of years of human influence. Farming, the building of settlements, the winning of valuable minerals and stone have all shaped to the familiar landscapes of today and contribute to the cultural richness and of the area and a distinctive local character.
The Clwydian Range contains sites of past human activity and occupation dating back to at least 30,000 BC. Indeed the whole way the landscape looks today is a result of the way people have managed their environment for farming, subsistence, extraction, transportation and recreation over perhaps the last 5000 years.
The Iron Age hillforts which crown the Range are the most obvious and best known archaeological feature of the area, forming a very significant part of the landscape of the central Range. Dating from about 800 BC to 43 AD, the six forts vary in size from the massive Penycloddiau to the more compact Moel Arthur. They dominate the landscape now as in the past. Their function, both defensive and as sites of display, probably varied from controlling centres for territories stretching down the Clwydian Range, across the Vale and up into the hills beyond; to tribal gathering places; summer grazing or sites of ritual.
The Range contains many Bronze Age burial monuments, dating from about 2,000 to 800 BC. Evidence of settlements is limited but Bronze Age peoples may have used the sites of succeeding hillforts, as hinted at by the discovery of a Bronze Age hoard of axes at Moel Arthur, and similar activity at nearby Moel y Gaer, Rhosesmor.
Much of the landscape pattern visible today of villages and isolated farmsteads date from this period. Churches of medieval origin lie in many of the villages within the AONB. Nearby Denbigh and Ruthin castles were established in the time of Edward 1st as an English control of Welsh land. Large parts of the Clwydian Range were still owned by the Ruthin Castle Estate right up until the middle of the 19th century.
In more recent years the Range has seen the development of several large parkland estates including Golden Grove and Colomendy. Some developed following the accumulation of wealth built up from the expansion of local industries, particularly lead mining, and extensive remains of this mining activity are still visible in the limestone areas. Of the four remaining Cornish engine houses in Denbighshire, three lie within the AONB and the fourth lies just outside.
Throughout the range water was harnessed to provide power; for lead mining particularly on the Alyn, whilst the River Wheeler was used to power corn mills, tin plate works, paper mills and sawmills. It was at this time that transport within the Range began to change. Gradually a network of tracks both around and across the Range were replaced or superseded as the use of motorised vehicles increased. A railway crossed the Range to the north.
