Wrexham

Wrexham

Wrexham (pronounced 'recsam', and in Welsh spelt wrecsam) is a town and county borough in Wales. It is in the border region with England, and was traditionally part of Denbighshire, although some of the area of the borough was formerly part of Flintshire.

The borough has a population of 130,000 inhabitants, and the town itself, some 40,000, making it the largest settlement in North Wales.

Radio stations MFM 103.4 and Classic Gold Marcher broadcast to the town.

It has a football team, Wrexham F.C. which compete in the Football League. It also serves as the secondary home of the Llanelli Scarlets, one of the five Welsh professional rugby sides that compete in the Celtic League.

Wrexham was the also one of the most industrial areas in Wales, it had Brickworks, Steelworks, and many coal mines, all these are now however closed. The result of all these industries have left their mark, as the Wrexham areas had a very large and comlex network of railways, with the Main Branch being the Wrexham and Minera Branch, which supported the steel works, The largest village (coedpoeth) and the Minera Limeworks. When the netowrk was torn up in the 60's (and the Minera Branch in the early 70's) Wrexam began a cain of Depression, first the many Coal mines went, then the Brickworks and other Misc industries and finally the Steelworks (which had its own railway branch up unitl closure) in the 80's. Wrexham was stuck, people wanted to move and sell their homes but no-one wanted a house where there was no work.

It was in the 80's and 90's that the WDA (Welsh Development Agency) Stepped in an put a stop to this, they funded a major dual carriageway by[assing Wrexham and connecting it with Chester and Shrewsbry, which had connections with other Big cities, it funded shops and reclaim lots of spoil left from the coal mines. One still exists today. Mcdonalds, Game, Burger king, KFC, BHS and other major shops came to Wrexham and people were emplyoed again, but the biggest breakthrough was the Wrexham Industrial Estae which manufactures lots of things, Kellogs makes cereal there. The dual carriageway was expanded halfway to the estate in 2003, and is expected to get there by 2006.

Now Wrexham is the biggest settlement in N wales and has been up for conversion to city many times. The WDA can withdraw funds from supporting Wrexham but now its is big enough to support itself.