Ponciau

Ponciau is a village within the community of Rhosllanerchrugog, Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It is close to the villages of Legacy, Pentre Bychan , and Johnstown and is overlooked by Ruabon Mountain. The village name is also applied to a larger electoral ward, whose population at the 2011 Census was 4,842. The Welsh word ponc, plural ponciau, means "bank" or "hillock", and the village probably takes its name from the large number of spoil tips which formerly covered the area. The village name was spelt using the form "Ponkey" until 1932, when the villagers convened a meeting to petition for its change to Ponciau, feeling the earlier spelling to be ugly in addition to inaccurately representing Welsh language phonetics. While this was based on a belief that "Ponkey" was an anglicised spelling, it probably reflected a local pronunciation of the word in the dialect of Denbighshire, where the word ending -au was pronounced -e or -ey. Ponciau grew up around coal and iron ore mining and iron founding. Iron ore was mined nearby at Llwyneinion. A coal pit was recorded here in 1757, with a lease on land being taken out by the great industrialist John Wilkinson, while the Ponciau ironworks is thought to have been started in 1807 by Thomas Jones of Gardden. A second ironwork was commenced nearby at Aberderfyn in the same period. Houses were built nearby, with little regard for planning, to house the workers. At Brynydd, close to the Royal Oak public house, was the former site of typical very basic, one room, terraced, workers' houses. Ponciau and Rhosllanerchrugog previously had more than 150 public houses but the majority of those have closed. The Colliers Arms and Horse & Jockey remain. One of the main streets in Ponciau is Chapel Street, which once contained a large number of nonconformist chapels: the Ponciau area had been one of the main centres of the 1859 and 1904-5 Welsh religious revivals. Several chapels remain in use. Many of the old buildings in the village are made from distinctive 'Ruabon Red' bricks, the product of local clays from the Ruabon Brick and Terracotta Company.