Bangor-on-Dee
Bangor-on-Dee () is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, on the banks of the River Dee. Until 1974 it was in the exclave of Flintshire known as the Maelor Saesneg, and from 1974 to 1996 in the county of Clwyd. The community had a population of 1,110 at the 2011 Census. Etymology. The anglicised name refers to the village's proximity to the River Dee. However, the older Welsh name, "Bangor-is-y-Coed" (or "Bangor Is-Coed") literally means "Bangor" (a settlement with a wattle enclosure) "below the wood/trees". This form  was first recorded in 1699, while an alternative name of the parish, "Bangor Monachorum" ("Bangor of the monks"), was first recorded in 1677. History. A monastery was established at Bangor in about AD 560 by Saint Dunod (or Dunawd) and was an important religious centre in the 5th and 6th centuries. The monastery was destroyed in about 613 by the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelfrith of Northumbria after he defeated the Welsh armies at the Battle of Chester, which probably took place near Bangor-on-Dee; a number of the monks then transferred to Bardsey Island and appear among lists of  saints. Before the battle, monks from the monastery had fasted for three days and then climbed a hill to witness the fight and pray for the success of the Welsh; they were massacred on the orders of Æthelfrith. The scholar Bede wrote that 1200 monks were slaughtered and only 50 escaped. Other accounts are very different in terms of the numbers killed and the date: the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle", for example, states that 200 priests were slain at Chester in 607. More than a millennium later, the massacre was recounted in a poem entitled "The Monks of Bangor's March