Welcome to Wrexham! Victorian Wrexham. A period plump with possibilities for historical crime writers. And especially during Wrexham’s 1876 “Year of Wonder”.
I settled here (originally from Liverpool), forty-five years ago with my Wrexham-born wife, Ann. When we both retired, some year later, I developed a passion for the town’s history and also for writing historical fiction full-time – a strict daily routine, which sees me scribbling from early in the morning, revising (in my head, obviously) while I swim, and then scribbling some more, and nibbling cake, in one of Wrexham’s excellent indie coffee shops. Afternoons, or evenings, are usually research time – when we’re not doing the school run with our great-grandkids.
I also help to organise the Wrexham Carnival of Words, our annual literary and storytelling festival, currently in its eleventh year.
Wrexham – now officially designated a city – has seen many changes to its fortunes, but few so drastic as those at the Football Club. The new owners, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, and Phildelphia-born sitcom star Rob McElhenney, have breathed new life into the Cae Ras ground and, indeed, into the whole community. The TV series, Welcome to Wrexham, has brought a whole new tourism industry in its wake – with regular groups of American tourists trying to find the Turf Hotel or other locations frequently seen in the programme.
We therefore decided to exploit the opportunity for the sake of the festival and, between us, wrote and published the guidebook Wrexham Revealed. It’s a handy pocket-sized book, listing twenty stopping points around the town centre to help those wanting self-guided walking tours of Wrexham’s history to do so with ease. For the past two years, it’s been selling like the proverbial hot cakes, with all proceeds helping to fund the festival.
By now, I guess, you’ll be wondering what any of this has to do with historical crime writing. Well, it was this. While helping to write Wrexham Revealed, there were many references to the more notable years in Wrexham’s history: 1463, and the town ravaged by a terrible fire; 1643, and Cromwell; 1715, and the establishment of Bersham Ironworks, as well as the Jacobite riots; 1857, and the town’s first Corporation; 1864, and the formation of Wrexham Football Club – the third-oldest professional football club in the world.
But then came 1876, and an astonishing number of major events: the establishment of the Football Association of Wales; the opening of the elaborate and beautiful new garden cemetery; the first National Eisteddfod to be held in Wrexham; our first tram system; and the year’s crowning glory – the great Art Treasures and Industrial Exhibition.
The Exhibition – one of the largest ever held at the time in the UK – ran for 4 months, twelve hours a day, seven days every week. It exhibited 1,000 major paintings and 10,000 other priceless works of art or rare artefacts. It was all housed in a colossal pavilion, almost like the Crystal Palace, right in the heart of town. And it was just too good to ignore.
I’d been reading the books written by Wrexham’s most noted historian, Alfred Neobard Palmer. I knew that Palmer’s fiancée, young Ettie Francis, had been in town for the Eisteddfod – her father was a patron for one of the bards – but had Palmer been with her? There’s no actual record of him arriving in Wrexham until 1880. But what if he’d come there with Ettie during the 1876 Exhibition and Eisteddfod? What if they’d both become embroiled in some terrible crimes and their subsequent investigation? What if those crimes has such significance for state security that their story has never been disclosed – until now?
I spent a while immersed in the archived pages of the Wrexham Advertiser for 1876, and the result, in 2023, was Blood Among The Threads – so far as I know, Wrexham’s first-ever Victorian crime novel.
In the following year, a second novel featuring Alfred and Ettie, though a standalone, set in 1884, Death Along The Dee.
It’s pleasing to note that that this flurry of attention around 1876 – mainly from the guidebook – has made us all aware that 2026, will see the 150th anniversary of those big events. As you read this, thirty different organisations across Wrexham, supported by Wrexham Council and other key players, are putting together a programme of commemorations, over the whole year, to help showcase Wrexham’s Culture, Arts and Industry – past, present and future.
Meanwhile, California-based historical novelist Patricia Bracewell, a frequent visitor here to the Marches, wrote to tell me how much she’d enjoyed Blood Among The Threads, describing it as “a real love letter to Wrexham”. It is, I think, the nicest thing anybody could ever have said about one of my novels.
Leave a Reply