Chirk & Ceiriog Valley

Chirk sits on the River Ceiriog at the England–Wales border within Wrexham county borough. The Llangollen Canal crosses the valley on the Chirk Aqueduct, engineered by Thomas Telford, and enters Chirk Tunnel shortly after. A brick railway viaduct from the Shrewsbury–Chester line and Chirk Castle, dating from the late 13th century, mark the town and its approach to the river and canal. The junction of waterways and rail shaped local trade and settlement patterns around the town.

The Ceiriog Valley runs west and south from Chirk along the River Ceiriog into the lower slopes of the Berwyn foothills. Villages such as Glyn Ceiriog and Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog follow the river corridor, where mills and quarries once formed much of the local economy. The valley’s place names and lanes appear in the work of John Ceiriog Hughes, and the river reaches the Dee close to Chirk, with field boundaries, river terraces and scattered woodland lining the narrow valley floor.