Denbigh

Denbigh, a parliamentary and municipal borough, the county town of Denbighshire, 30 miles W. of Chester by rail. It stands near the middle of the vale of the Clwyd, on the sides and at the base of a rugged steep limestone-hill. The castle, whose imposing ruins crown this hill, was built in 1284 by Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, on the site of a fortress erected by William the Conqueror. The newer part of Denbigh was built at the bottom of the hill, after the destruction and desertion of a great part of the town on the top of the hill, about 1550. Denbigh has manufactures of shoes and leather; but it is more a place of genteel retirement than of commerce. Pop. (1851) 5498; (1891) 6412. With Ruthin, Holt, and Wrexham, Denbigh sends one member to parliament. In 1645 Charles I. took refuge in the castle after the battle of Rowton Heath. The garrison surrendered to the parliamentary forces after a siege of two months. It was shortly afterwards dismantled. The fortifications have an area of a square mile in extent. A lunatic asylum for the five counties of North Wales was erected near the town in 1848. A noble institution for the maintenance and education of twenty-five orphan girls, and twenty-five day pupils, was built here in 1860, with funds in the hands of the Drapers' Company of London, from money left to them in 1540 by one Thomas Howell, a Welshman.