page_title: Ponciau
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ponciau / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Bethel Chapel, Johnson Street, Ponciau
context_page_description: Ponciau is a village within the community of Rhosllanerchrugog, Wrexham, 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.
context_section_description: 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 in fact 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 ironfounding. 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 ironworks 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 still 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.
  Ponciau ward has one of the largest populations (4,486) of Wrexham County Borough. The ward is described as "The Ponciau North, Ponciau South and Rhos wards of the Community of Rhosllanerchrugog and the Aberoer and Pentrebychan wards of the Community of Esclusham" in the OPSI document Statutory Instrument 1998 No. 3142. 29% of households do not own a car. A section of the ward boundary follows the path of the River Clywedog.
caption: Bethel Chapel, Johnson Street. Ponciau still contains many Nonconformist chapels, some built in the distinctive 'Ruabon Red' brick.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "E775", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "E775v1.4u", "Image DateTime": "2003:04:12 13:39:37", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "284", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2036", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3937", "EXIF ExposureTime": "10/1793", "EXIF FNumber": "79/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:04:12 13:39:37", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:04:12 13:39:37", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "7/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "886", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}