All
around us the former scenes of rapine and violence are changed to
fertility and peace. The Old Castle serves well to illustrate the
contrast. Its hugely solid walls, reared 600 years ago with so much
pains and skill to repel the invader and to overawe the lawless, have
played their part, and are themselves abandoned to solitude and decay.
Within the arches which once echoed to the clang of arms the owls have
their home; while the rooks from the tree-tops around seem to chant the
_requiem_ of the past.
{Ruins of Old Castle: p21.jpg}
The Church.
{The Church: p22.jpg}
Hawarden Church, with its large graveyard attached, finely situated
overlooking the estuary of the Dee, is supposed to have been built about
A.D. 1275, and has much solidity and dignity of structure. The patron
saint is S. Deiniol, founder of the Collegiate monastery at Bangor, and
about A.D. 550 made first Bishop of that See. In the old records he is
styled one of the three "Gwynvebydd" or holy men of the Isle of Britain.
He was buried in Bardsey Island. A place still called "Daniel's
Ash"--perhaps a corruption of Deiniol--may be the very spot where he
gathered his disciples round him. Two Dedication festivals are observed,
the one on S. Deiniol's Day, December 10th, the other on the Sunday after
Holy Cross Day, September 14th.
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