OSWESTRY, a market-town and municipal borough in Shropshire, England, on the borders of Wales, on two railway lines and near the Shropshire Canal, 18 miles northwest of Shrewsbury and 16 north from Welshpool. It is a well-built town with wide and regular streets, although some of the old wooden houses still remain. There are still some traces of the ancient castle erected in the reign of Stephen. The church of St Oswald, originally conventual, has been very much altered, the original structure having been more than once damaged, and the tower taken down by the Royalists in 1644. It was restored in 1872 at a cost of <£10,000. For the free grammar school, founded in the reign of Henry IV., a new building was erected in 1810, which was enlarged in 1863 and 1878. Among the other public buildings are the public hall, the Victoria Rooms, the guildhall, the general market-hall, the literary institute, the union workhouse, and the cottage hospital. The town possesses locomotive repairing works, steam-engine, threshing machine, and agricultural implement works, steam printing works, corn mills, malting works, breweries, and a leather factory. In the vicinity are coalmines and limestone quarries. The population of the municipal borough (area 1888 acres) in 1871 was 7306, and in 1881 it was 7847....
Oswestry was called by the Britons Tre’r Cadeiriau, the town of chairs or seats commanding an extensive view, in reference to the eminences in the neighbourhood. It existed in the 4th century, and, having been given in the 5th century by Cunedda Wledig, prince of North Wales, to his son Oswael, it received the name of Osweiling and subsequently Maserfield. After a battle in 642 between Oswald the Christian king of Northumbria, and Penda the pagan king of Mercia, in which the former was slain, the name was changed to Oswaldstre (Welsh, Croes Oswallt), which was gradually corrupted into Oswestry. On the spot where Oswald was slain a monastery was afterwards erected, and near its site there is a spring still called Oswald’s well. In 777 Oswestry was disjoined from Powis and added to Mercia. It stands between Offa’s and Wat’s dykes. About a mile from the town is an old 'British earthwork, known as Old Port, a corruption of Old Fort (Welsh, Hên Dinas), and sometimes called Old Oswestry, from a tradition that Oswestry originally occupied its site. Oswestry is not mentioned in Domesday. The castle is said to have been built about 1149 by Madoc, the ruler of Powis Vadog. It was burned in 1216 and in 1233. Edward I. began in 1277 to surround the town with walls, which were about one mile in circumference and had four gates. During invasions of the Welsh the town λvas burned in 1400 and 1403; it also suffered severely from a similar cause in 1542, 1544, and 1567, and in 1559 it was devastated by the plague. Oswestry was garrisoned for the Royalists, but surrendered 22d J une 1644, and a few years afterwards the castle was demolished. The town obtained the grant of a fair from Henry HI. It received its first charter from William Fitz-Alan in the reign of Henry 11., and a royal charter from Richard II. Its present charter was granted by Charles II.
See Price, History of Oswestry, 1815; Cathral], History of Oswestry and Topography of the Borough, 1855; Pennant, Tour·, Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire.
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