Hawarden, United Kingdom

1157, Henry II., having assembled a formidable army at Chester, advanced into Flintshire with a view to conquering Wales and camped on Saltney marsh, in the parish. To repel this attack, Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, marched his forces to Basingwerk near Holywell, where he took up his station within a few miles of the royal army. The boldness of Owain's movements inducing Henry to hope that the natives intended to risk a general engagement, in which he expected that the superior number and discipline of the English would ensure success, the king despatched a chosen body of troops, under the command of his principal barons, to bring the Welsh to action or to dislodge them from their position. This party, having to pass through the narrow defile of Coed-Eulo, in the parish of Hawarden, were suddenly attacked in that dangerous pass by Davydd and Cynan, sons of Owain, who, with a strong body of men, had set an ambush. Owing to the suddenness and impetuosity of the assault and the difficulties of the ground on which they had to contend, the English were routed with great slaughter and the few who escaped the carnage withdrew in the utmost disorder to the main body of the army. Exasperated by this unexpected discomfiture, Henry immediately collected the whole of his forces and marched along the coast into the heart of the enemy's country; and Owain, breaking up his camp, retired with his forces to St. Asaph.

Efforts to subdue north Welsh territory into a degree of fiefdom followed intermittently, with no great success. In the castle Llewellyn of Wales who was in possession negotiated peace in 1264 with Simon de Montford, who led a brief rebellion against Henry III of England and agreed to betroth his daughter to Llewellyn in exchange for restoring the de facto Welsh castle to Robert de Montault. The rebellion failed. Accordingly, by 1280 the castle became a crown asset, listed as a Castrum Regis. Later, following Edward's successful campaign imposing exacting terms on the Welsh, building Flint Castle and strengthening other castles, in 1282 Llewellyn's brother Dafydd took the castle back, killing the garrison and transferring Roger de Clifford to remote Snowdon. This second recapture of the castle triggered Edward's killing of Llewellyn and annexation of Wales. The castle became a prized possession: see Hawarden Castle.

The village of Saltney (next to Chester, but in Wales) was part of the parish.

The prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) spent his later life in Hawarden Castle, which had in the Glorious Revolution been acquired by his wife's family, the Glynne baronets. In 1847 water was brought into the place at an expense of upwards of £1000 to be recouped by the River Dee Company. In the nineteenth century the economy of the parish (about three times larger than the modern Community Council area) involved weekly markets, many seams of coal, the making of tiles, bricks and drainage pipes and chemicals such as Glauber salts and ivory black making.

In 1886 the curate of Hawarden, the Rev. Harry Drew, married Mary Gladstone, the second daughter of the Prime Minister, at St Margaret's Church, Westminster – a society wedding attended by the Prince of Wales.

In 1896, Hawarden was the location of prime minister William Ewart Gladstone's meeting with Li Hongzhang, a key reformer in the Qing dynasty's Self Strengthening Movement, on his diplomatic mission to the UK.

Gladstone bequeathed his library to the town under the name of St Deiniol's Library in honour of the patron saint of the parish church next door. It is the only residential library in Britain and was renamed Gladstone's Library in 2010.