Hope Street
Walk along Hope Street. The Welsh name Stryd yr Hôb dates from the origins of the town when it was the road leading out to Hope. Pass by the building site that was WHSmiths. In 1699 the Three Pigeons Hotel was built on this site and in the 1840s it became the Lion Hotel. When a Russian cannon captured in the Crimean War was brought to Wrexham in 1857, the celebrations were held at the Lion. It seems it was a popular drinking den for the town's many soldiers. Another unlikely visitor was Guiseppe Garibaldi, the Italian Revolutionary, who had friends at Marchwiel Hall.
Fork left at the next junction and continue along Hope Street. Keep an eye out for a thatched building on the left and a tall gateway building on the right.
The thatched building is the Horse & Jockey pub. There used to be a lot of thatched buildings in Wrexham and its surrounds but very few have survived the 20th Century. The Horse & Jockey is the only historic thatched pub left in the town.
The gateway, officially known as Westminster Buildings, is all that remains of Wrexham's Agricultural & Scientific exhibition held in 1876. These exhibitions were very popular in the second half of the 19th Century. Any place that wanted to show that it was a bastion of industrial progress and entrepreneurship had to have an exhibition. Where Wrexham trod, Paris and Glasgow followed. A temporary exhibition hall was built covering the land between Egerton Street and Rhosddu Road and Argyle Street and Hope Street: the result a huge display area featuring fine art, industrial design and products of the local industries - Bricks, Tiles & Terracotta; Mineral Water & Brewing and Engineering. Like all the great exhibitions the hall was temporary and everyone in the press complained about how much it all cost.
