Loggerheads is a village in Denbighshire

Denbighshire

Denbighshire is a county in north-east Wales. It is named after the historic county of Denbighshire, but has substantially different borders. Denbighshire has the distinction of being the oldest inhabited part of Wales. Pontnewydd Palaeolithic site has remains of Neanderthals from 225,000 years...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 on the River Alyn

River Alyn

The River Alyn is a tributary of the River Dee. The River Alyn rises at the southern end of the Clwydian hills and the Alyn Valley forms part of the Clwydian Range Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...

 , a tributary of the River Dee

River Dee, Wales

The River Dee is a long river in the United Kingdom. It travels through Wales and England and also forms part of the border between the two countries....

.

It has a country park

Country park

A country park is an area designated for people to visit and enjoy recreation in a countryside environment.-History:In the United Kingdom the term 'Country Park' has a special meaning. There are over 400 Country Parks in England alone . Most Country Parks were designated in the 1970s, under the...

 which follows the course of the River Alyn through karstic

Karst topography

Karst topography is a geologic formation shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite, but has also been documented for weathering resistant rocks like quartzite given the right conditions.Due to subterranean drainage, there...

 limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 countryside including the sites of old lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

 mines

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 and mills. there is a working flour mill on site.

A leat

Leat

A leat is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond...

 or leete, built around 1824 follows the side of the valley nearby and was used to carry water to the lead mines of Mold Mines, on land owned by the Grosvenor

Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster

Major-General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, , is the son of Robert George Grosvenor, 5th Duke of Westminster, and his wife Hon. Viola Maud Lyttelton. He is the owner of property company Grosvenor Group...

 family. It is now the popular Leete Walk. The name Loggerheads may come from the dispute over estate boundaries between the lordships of Mold

Mold, Flintshire

Mold is a town in Flintshire, North Wales, on the River Alyn. It is the administrative seat of Flintshire County Council, and was also the county town of Clwyd from 1974 to 1996...

 and Llanferres

Llanferres

Llanferres is a village and parish in the county of Denbighshire in Wales. At the 2001 Census the population of the village was recorded as 676.- Geography :...

. The final boundary is marked by Carreg Carn March Arthur which is said to bear the imprint of Arthur

Arthur

Arthur is a common masculine given name. Its etymology is disputed, but its popularity derives from its being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur....

's horse's hoof after it jumped from the nearby mountain, Moel Famau

Moel Famau

Moel Famau is the highest hill within the Clwydian Range on the border between Denbighshire and Flintshire in North Wales. The hill, which also gives its name to the Moel Famau country park, has been classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty since 1985...

. The local pub has a sign showing two men grimacing at each other with the words We Three Loggerheads, taken from a painting by Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson (painter)

Richard Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' He is considered to be the...

. The third loggerhead was the viewer.

Further reading

• Gordon Emery, Curious Clwyd 2 (1996) ISBN 1-872265-97-9
• Cris Ebbs, Underground Clwyd (1998) ISBN 1-872265-93-6
• C J Williams, Lead Mines of the Alyn Valley (1987) ISBN 0-9512776-0-X

External links