Interactive Map:
ArcIMS is slowly being abandoned by ESRI, so maintenance of the ArcIMS maps is becoming extremely difficult. We have decided to migrate this map interface to a more sustainable software stack using non-proprietary software. We will begin the migration to GeoServer and OpenLayers as soon as possible, but until then we apologise for any inconvenience.
Help for using the Interactive Map
An Interactive Map has been provided to enable you to examine the various spatial data compiled throughout the survey using basic WebGIS tools. To begin using the map click the button labelled 'Switch On' found in the box above.
Groups/Layers:
Each map contains several layers grouped under the following headings:
- Archaeology
- Plan Elements
- Metrics
- Survey Data
- Base Map
Layers can be selected either singularly or as a group. Toggling the group visibility icon will display/hide every layer featured within the specific group. To display a single layer within a group, the group must be opened and the relevant layer can then be enabled/disabled by selecting the layer visibility icon . However, only one Base Map layer can be displayed at any one time.
A layer can be made active be either clicking the relevant radio button or by clicking the layer title. The layer will become highlighted when it is active.
The Group/Layer panel can be hidden by clicking on the vertical grey button marked with an arrow. The arrow button will slide toward the left of the map area and the map will be re-rendered filling the whole area. Clicking the arrow button again will show the Layer/Group panel. When the Layer/Group panel is hidden/shown the active tool will be deselected.
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Tools:
The various tools found in the tool panel on the right of the map allow a further element of interactivity. There is a handy text tip next to each button on the interface to explain what each button is for, but on this page we go into a little bit more detail:
| Zoom in - Click on the map to zoom in (the map will be centred on your mouse click). |
| Zoom out - Click on the map to zoom out (the map will be centred on your mouse click). |
| Zoom to full extent - Zoom to the extent of all the layers within the map - this is a quick way of getting back to the map's starting position |
| Pan - Click on the map and drag it in any direction to change the area of view. |
| Identify - Click on a feature on the active layer to see the data attached to it. The data will appear in a popup window. |
| Rectangle select - Use your mouse to draw a rectangle on the screen to select a group of features within the active layer. The associated data from these features will be displayed in a popup window and the selected features will be highlighted. |
| Clear selection - If you have any features selected/highlighted, this tool will unselect them. |
| Show legend - Show a map legend of archaeological features in a popup window. Point data and basemap information is omitted. |
The tool in use will be highlighted by a red box.
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General guidance:
Be patient! Every time you zoom, pan, refresh or query the map, a request is sent to the server and new image is created and delivered to your desktop. Whilst this request is being sent, do not try and send extra requests as this will produce error messages. Your browser can only send and receive one GIS request at a time so don't push it!
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The GIS files are also available as downloads if further functionality is required.
Discussion:
The following sections are also available to download in PDF format.
Early history of the town
The origins of the new town of Holt are somewhat obscure. It lies closest to England of all Edward's new towns of Wales, just across the river Dee, within one of its many meanders. It is questionable whether or not Holt should really be included in this survey of Edwardian new towns, since neither it nor the castle were in the king's hands but belonged to John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, who was given lands in Bromfield and Yal in October 1282 as 'a recompense for service rendered in war'.[256] In this regard it appears to be similar to the new towns of Ruthin and Denbigh (in the same county) that were created alongside the seigneurial castles of Reginald de Grey and Henry de Lacy (respectively) at around the same time.[257] However, two pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest there may have been some early royal influence at Holt. The first concerns the castle, begun in 1282 but first documented as late as 1315,[258] which Arnold Taylor suggests 'would have had the king's full cognisance', perhaps with 'the services of the master of the king's works'.[259] The second concerns the town's origins. Although the town's original borough charter does not survive, a royal confirmation of 1563 refers to an earlier one of 1285, granted by Warenne.[260] Prior to this, in November 1282, Roger Lestrange had written to the king advising him 'to tell Earl Warenne to keep watch at Brumpfeld [Bromfield], for much supplies enter the land without anyone's knowledge'.[261] This is an indication that Edward had his eye on the place before Holt was founded, perhaps even having in mind the idea of controlling the river crossing there by using a castle and town to block supplies getting through to the Welsh. Warenne's castle and town ultimately served this purpose, but while it is clear that Holt is not a royal foundation, as were say Rhuddlan or Flint, it was more than simply the product of Warenne's thinking. For this reason it is included here as one of Edward's new towns, others can debate the appropriateness of this.
Holt is recorded early on in the fourteenth century as Castle Lyon (Castrum Leonis).[262] Its position on the Dee was evidently chosen deliberately and carefully, as Lestrange's letter makes clear. The 1411 copy of the borough charter shows that the town's market was held on Fridays, and its burgages rented at one shilling a year.[263] The town soon became quite large. In 1315 152 burgesses were living there, and out of a total of just over 200 burgages, the majority (107) of burgesses held one burgage each.[264] At this date this makes Holt's burgess population larger than Conwy, Caernarfon and Aberystwyth, three prominent Edwardian towns, and closer in size to the nearby Denbighshire new towns of the earls, in particular Denbigh.[265] The burgesses living in Holt at this time originated mainly from the north-west of England, particularly Cheshire, but others arrived from further afield, from southern and eastern parts of England.[266] The town seems to have been set up to be quite an important place. There was a port on the Dee 'next to the bridge there for smacks and boats coming with merchandise from Chester', while the bridge itself was built by the end of the fourteenth century to replace a ferry that was operating in 1315.[267] It seems, too, that the town was intended to have been defended. The 1391 survey of the town records how 'in the time of war each burgess or his airs or assigns shall find for the burgage one garrison man at their own cost for guarding and warding the lord's castle there until the said town be enclosed with a wall of lime and stone'.[268] No defences are known to have been built for the town. By the mid-sixteenth century falling market tolls show that the town was in decline, although in the next century its fortunes may have recovered slightly.[269]
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The design and plan of the town
A further indication that Holt had connections with Edward's other towns in north-east Wales is to be seen in the layout of its plan. This requires some careful consideration, however. The town-plan of Holt comprises two broad streets, Church Street/Bridge Street and Cross Street/Green Street, which run in parallel almost due north-south between the site of the castle and the river. Placed halfway along these two streets is an open space, more or less rectangular in shape, opposite the entrance to the parish church of St Chad, located on the east side of the town.[270] These two main streets were once greater in width, as is indicated on the 1840s Tithe Award map (indicated, too, by the set-back building frontages along the streets). The southern end of the main streets is defined by a cross street (The Cross) running more or less at right angles, this opening out to form a triangular open space one end of which provided the entrance to the castle. At the northern end of the town there is another cross street connecting the two parallel main streets, a deeply incised lane on Holt Hill, and from the eastern end of this street Bridge Street runs up to the bridge over the Dee, itself a late medieval structure built of local red sandstone.[271]
The overall layout of Holt is highly regular in form, the main streets and cross streets being set out on straight alignments, defining narrow, long street-blocks, which themselves encompass uniform series of building plots. The plot patterns have an orderly appearance, expressed in the straightness of their boundaries shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey plan of the town. The street-blocks on first impression would seem to differ not in length but in depth. Thus, the block of plots on the west side of Cross Street/Green Street appears to be deeper than the width of the central street-block that lies between the two main streets; while on the east side of Church Street/Bridge Street the plots are much shallower in depth and extend back as far as a field-lane which runs parallel to the main street. This difference in plot depths across the town odd as it spoils the otherwise symmetrical form of the town's plan. However, with the help of field measurements made in the town, combined with careful study of the map evidence, what begins to emerge is a pattern of regularity in plot depths along both sides of the two main streets. For plots fronting along both sides of Church Street/Bridge Street, and for those on the eastern side of Cross Street/Green Street, the distance from the building frontage back to the rear of the plots is around 135 feet (40m).[272] On the western side of Cross Street/Green Street plots extend back to about double this distance, just over 270 feet (80m). The reason why plots on the west side of Cross Street/Green Street extend back twice as far as the others is probably because they were once split by a lane running north-south, mirroring the course of the field lane that ran behind plots on the east side of Church Street/Bridge Street.[273] Indeed this eastern field-lane appears to have had plots fronting it along both sides, placing the parish church within its own plot series (which has subsequently disappeared). Looking at the pattern of plots and streets in Holt overall, then, it appears as though the town plan - in terms of its street-blocks - was once more symmetrical in form, with six uniform blocks of plots, each of equal length and depth, and with four rather than three streets running north-south in parallel, the two inner ones being wider than the outer two.
From an analysis of Holt's surviving street and plot patterns it is therefore possible to conjecture the town's original design. The design was based upon parallel streets that run north from a 'base line' formed by the straight alignment of Frog Lane and The Cross. To the south of this line is the castle. The castle and its enclosure appear to have encompassed a larger area than is shown on modern maps, for the courses of both the 'base line' streets and Chapel Street seem to fossilise the outer perimeter of the castle defences, with Castle Street itself - a straight street that seems to bypass Chapel Lane - laid out after the castle's demise and running through its grounds.[274] This encroachment may have been a late-medieval attempt at property development in the town, and pulled the focus southwards to The Cross, the later market place.[275] If this supposition is correct then when Holt was first created it consisted only of the area covered by the parallel street pattern, with the town's market place originally formed by Church Green, opposite the entrance to St Chad's. There is a hint that there was access into this market place from the west, as there is a lane that runs through the plots facing Cross Street/Green Street, about mid-way along this street. This, together with the market place and the church, align on an east-west axis. What we have at Holt, then, is an original design derived using a symmetrical arrangement of straight streets producing regular-sized street-blocks accommodating plots of a consistent depth (and perhaps width too).[276] This very regular arrangement of streets and plots was placed north of the earl's castle, with the church and market place positioned half-way along on the town's horizontal axis, its vertical axis being formed by the straight fence-line running north-south along the rear of plots within the central street-block.
With this interpretation of Holt, the original plan of the town begins to look similar to that at Flint, a 1277 new town situated on the coast to the north of Holt. The similarities in their layout lie in the common use of parallel streets and narrow longitudinal street-blocks. Both plans also lack latitudinal streets, except for those cross streets positioned mid-way and at either end of the town. Like Flint, Holt's plan also extends from the castle gates and takes an overall 'playing-card' shape. While Holt did not have defences it seems they were planned, their likely intended course being along the outer perimeter of the street-blocks.[277] This would have made the circuit the same rectangular shape as that at Flint, and both around 30 acres in total area.[278] Of course, Holt post-dates Flint by about five years, if not more, and from a design point of view the churches in each are located in different positions in the towns. Nevertheless the design similarities between the two towns appear to outweigh the differences, and so it is conceivable that both were designed by the same individual. Considering the proximity of Holt and Flint, this individual was presumably someone who was local throughout this period, between 1277 and 1282-3. Considering what little is known of the early history of Holt it will be of no surprise to learn that its designer is nameless. Their anonymity makes the plan of the town all the more interesting for what it reveals. At a guess, then, we might suggest it was the work of one of the king's clerks working in this area at the time, an administrator such as William of Perton or Nicholas Bonel. This line of reasoning also has implications for identifying who designed Flint. Either way, the similarities evident in the two layouts of the towns is a further hint that Holt might legitimately be regarded as an 'Edwardian' new town, even though it was not itself a royal foundation.
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The town as it is today
Holt is a small town largely unspoiled by modern development, except for some recent housing within the medieval plot patterns along the two main streets. The area of the Edwardian town, north of The Cross, is largely residential and quiet, the main commercial and residential focus of Holt now being further south. Within the town as a whole there are few medieval structures still standing except for the church (rebuilt in the late fifteenth century), the castle (little of which is left since it was used as a stone quarry), and the bridge over the Dee, of late fourteenth century date.[279] The present-day street pattern and plot pattern reflect the medieval layout of the town. Some appreciation of its ordered form is afforded by walking the streets. On the east side of Church Street plot boundaries of some properties probably date back to the origins of the town, as indeed might others, such as the common back-fence of properties in the central street-block. In 2001 the population of Holt ward stood at just over 2800 inhabitants, but since the area of the settlement covers just a fraction of the ward the figure for the town is likely to be about half this.
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References:
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.42; see also A.N. Palmer, 'The town of Holt', Archaeologia Cambrensis 6 (1907), p.9; L.A.S. Butler, 'Holt Castle: John de Warenne and Chastellion', in J.R. Kenyon and R. Avent (eds.), Castles in Wales and the Marches: essays in honour of D.J. Cathcart King (University Press, Cardiff, 1987), pp.105-24.
- See Denbigh and Ruthin; also Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.35-7, 41-2; Beresford, New Towns, pp.547-49.
- D. Pratt, 'The medieval borough of Holt', Denbighshire Historical Society Transactions 14 (1965), p.13.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.43. As at Denbigh and Ruthin.
- Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, p.144, citing D. Pratt, 'The 1563 charter of Holt', Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society 23 (1974), pp.104-25. 1563 is the date of the inspeximus, 1411 is the date of the borough charter, itself confirming the earlier grant: Palmer, 'Town of Holt', pp.13-16, 26-31; Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', pp.20-1. See also P.H.W. Booth, 'The corporation of Holt, the manor of Farndon, and the bridge over the Dee, Denbighshire', Archaeologia Cambrensis 146 (2000 for 1997), pp.109-16.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.43, note 1 citing Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Wales, ed. Goronwy Edwards, p.84.
- Calendar of Ancient Petitions, ed. Rees, p.293, in a document dated 1318-26; see also Beresford, New Towns, p.548. Holt means 'wood', and 'must have been partially cleared at the laying out of the town': Palmer, 'Town of Holt', p.15, note 2.
- Palmer, 'Town of Holt', p.14. However, an extent of the town made in 1391 records markets 'on Tuesdays, Sundays, and on other days yearly', and it has been suggested that Church Green, The Cross and Smithfield Green were sites for markets in the medieval town: Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', pp.38, 55.
- Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.46.
- See D.H. Owen, 'Denbigh', and R.I. Jack, 'Ruthin', in R.A. Griffiths (ed.), Boroughs of Mediaeval Wales (University of Cardiff, Cardiff, 1978), pp.165-87, 245-61. At Denbigh, in 1305, 52 burgages were held in the town within the walls and 183 outside (Owen, 'Denbigh', p.182), while at Ruthin in 1324 'there were almost exactly 100 burgages held by seventy-one different people' (Jack, 'Ruthin', p.247).
- Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.23. A cross-section of the burgesses' occupations in 1315 is also provided by their surnames, which include tailors, clerks, smiths, and carpenters, as well as a birdkeeper, falconer, gardener, forester and herdsman (p.40).
- Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', pp.42-3, 56, citing the survey of 1391. Pratt also notes that the bridge had a gate tower on it (p.43).
- Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.53. See also, Palmer, 'Town of Holt, pp.14-15, citing the borough charter.
- Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.34; Soulsby, Medieval Towns of Wales, p.147.
- For the church see RCAHMW, Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales and Monmouthshire IV - county of Denbigh (HMSO, London, 1914), pp.75-6.
- On the bridge see Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', pp.42-3; RCAHMW, Denbigh, p.76.
- Field survey carried out in 2004, see 'Data downloads'.
- These former streets (back lanes) are shown on the c.1300 reconstruction map of Holt. Excavations were carried out in 1994 behind a property at the north end of Green Street, on the west side (NGR: SJ41005425). A possible medieval boundary ditch was identified, but on the whole there were no structures of medieval date and only a few 'traces of activity'. D. Thomas, Green Street, Holt, Clwyd: archaeological evaluation, Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust report 115 (1994), p.9.
- Little is known of the castle's medieval features. See RCAHMW, Denbigh, pp.74-5.
- On suggestions for the town's market places see Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', pp. 35, 38.
- The original plot sizes is 'not prescribed anywhere in the medieval records', according to Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.45. See also Palmer, 'Town of Holt', p.14, note 1.
- See Pratt, 'Medieval borough of Holt', p.53; Palmer, 'Town of Holt, pp.14-15
- See Flint.
- R.J. Silvester, M. Walters and D. Wayne, Wrexham Maelor Historic Settlements, Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust report 42 (1992), pp.47-8; see also RCAHMW, Denbigh, pp.74-6
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