HOLY\VELL, or TREFFYNNON, is a town of North Wales, in Hintshire, which derives its name from a re markably fine spring, which rises at the bottom of the hill just below the town. Holy well is pleasantly situated on the slope of a hill, abounding in lead ore, which rises beautifully above the town. The place is flourishing and well built, and consists of one long su•eet, which is crossed by another, near its centre, of equal goodness.
The church was built in the year 1769. It is a plain neat building, with a squat e tower at the west end ; but though it is furnished with a bell, yet, from its situation below the town, its sound is so inaudible, that it has been found necessary to summon the congregation by a person, who suspends a pretty large one front his neck by a leathern strap, and fixes a cushion upon his knee. This moveable spire walks along, eliciting sounds from the hell, whenever the cushioned knee strikes the instru ment. There are other three places of worship in the town, two for Roman Catholics, and one for Protestant dissenters.
The spring called St Winifred's well is reckoned one of the finest in the kingdom. It was found by one experi ment to discharge twenty-one tons in a minute, and by another 84 hogsheads. In the course of nearly two miles from the source of the spring to its junction with the Chester Channel, its water drives one corn mill, four cot ton manufactories, built in 1777, 1785, 1787, and 1790, a copper smelting-house, a brass•house, a foundry, a large copper smithy, a wire mill, a calamine calcinary, Sze. The water boils up with great force into a well of a polygonal shape, covered by a colonnaded cupola, having its groined roof loaded with ornaments. It is supposed, but without much reason, to have been built by the Countess of Derby, mother of Henry VII. Near the well is a chapel in the
pointed style, which seems to have been built before the time of Richard III. This building belongs to Mr Leo of Llanerch, and has recently been converted into a charity school. A precipitous hill above the church was the site of a fortress belonging to Ranulph the third Earl of Chester. No traces of the building, however, are now to be seen.
The great mining concern, called the Holywell Level, began in 1774, and till lately was an unprofitable concern. The level is carried horizontally for the length of a mile into the hill, and serves both as a drain to the work, and as a canal for the delivery of the ore. Numerous vertical shafts have been cut from this horizontal archway, some of them in pursuit of the mineral veins, and others for the purpose of ventilating the mines. The products obtained from the hill arc, 1. Limestone ; 2. Chertz or petrosilex, which is ground for the use of the potteries ; S. Lead ore • of two kinds, viz. cubic or dice ore, employed in glazing earthen ware, and white or stcel-graincd ore, containing some silver ; 4. Calamine, or ore of zinc ; 5. Blench:, another ore of zinc, called Black Jack by the miners. The lead ore sometimes brings from thirteen to fifteen pounds per ton, and at other times not more than seven or eight pounds.
An account of the copper and brass manufactures of Holywell has already been given in our at tick vol. ix. p. 371, to which the reader is referred.
The following is the population abstract of the town of Holywell for 1811 : See The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. xvii. p. 708, Scc.