loyal as any cavalier: the King, as a mark of his favour, [11a] bestowing a baronetcy upon his son in 1661. He possessed Henley Park, [11b] in Surrey, and an estate at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, (of which church, as well as Ambrosden, he was patron) where the family resided. He died at his house in Westminster in 1666, and was buried in a vault beneath the altar of S. Margaret’s Church.
His son, Sir William Glynne, the first baronet, sat in Parliament for Woodstock, and died in 1721. It was not till 1723 that the Glynnes moved to Hawarden, from Bicester. An old stone records the building of a house in Broadlane in 1727. In 1732 Sir John Glynne, nephew of Sir William, married Honora Conway, co-heiress with her sister Catherine of the Ravenscrofts of Bretton and Broadlane, an old family connected with Hawarden for many generations. [11c] This lady was the great great grand-daughter of Sir Kenelm Digby, and with her one-half of the Ravenscroft lands came into possession of the Glynnes; the other half in Bretton passing eventually to the Grosvenors. She died in 1769. In 1752 Sir John built a new house at Broadlane, which has since been the residence of the family.
Though not the founder of the family, Sir John Glynne may fairly be considered the founder of the place, and of the estate in its modern sense. Though he sat for five Parliaments for the Borough of Flint, he devoted himself largely to domestic concerns and to the improvement of his property by inclosure, drainage, and otherwise. The present beauty of the Park is in a great measure due to his energy and foresight. Upon the acquisition of Broadlane Hall, he at once took in hand the re-planting of the demesne, [12] first in Broadlane and about the Old Castle, and in 1747 on the Bilberry Hill. He also turned his attention to the developement of the minerals on the estate, and attempted the carriage of coals to Chester by water. He died in 1777.
His Grandson, Sir S. R. Glynne, married in 1806 the Hon. Mary Neville, daughter of Lord Braybrooke and of Catherine, sister to George, Marquess of Buckingham, and by her had four children: Stephen, eighth and last Baronet, born September 22, 1807; Henry, Rector of Hawarden born September 9th, 1810; Catherine, now Mrs. Gladstone, born January 6, 1812; and Mary, afterwards Lady Lyttelton, born July 22, 1813. He died in 1815 at the age of 35 years, and of his children Mrs. Gladstone alone survives. Sir Stephen, the last Baronet, died unmarried in 1874, surviving his brother the Rector only two years; and the Lordship of the Manor, together, by a family arrangement, with the estates, then devolved upon the present owner.
The Old Castle.
The Ruins of Hawarden Castle occupy a lofty eminence, guarded on the S. by a steep ravine, and on the other sides by artificial banks and ditches, partly favoured by the formation of the ground. The space so occupied measures about 150 yards in diameter. Upon the summit stands the Keep, towering some 50 feet above the main ward, and some 200 feet above the bottom of the ravine.
“The place presents,” says Mr. G. T. Clark, “in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. [13] The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers are attempting to set on fire. The Court below and the banks beyond the ditches were fenced with palisades and defences of that character.”
It was usual after the Conquest to replace these old fortifications with the thick and massive masonry characteristic of Norman Architecture. Hawarden, however, bears no marks of the Norman style though the Keep is unusually substantial. It appears, according to the
best authorities, [14] to be the work of one period, and that, probably, the close of the reign of Henry III. or the early part of that of Edward I. Hence Roger Fitzvalence, the first possessor after the Conquest, and the Montalts, who held it by Seneschalship to Hugh Lupus, must have been content to allow the old defences to remain, as any masonry constructed by them could scarcely have been so entirely removed as to show no trace of the style prevalent at the time.