Mynydd Isa (; ) is a village in

Flintshire Flintshire () is a county in the north-east of Wales. It borders the Irish Sea to the north, the Dee Estuary to the north-east, the English county of Cheshire to the east, Wrexham County Borough to the south, and Denbighshire to the west. ...

, in north-east

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

. It lies between the county town of

Mold A mold () or mould () is one of the structures that certain fungus, fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of Spore#Fungi, spores containing Secondary metabolite#Fungal secondary metabolites, fungal ...

, and Buckley (which it is contiguous with) in the community of Argoed which had a population of 5837 according to the 2011 census. Mynydd Isa was originally a small

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

on the north side of the Mold to Buckley road (now the A549 road) just downhill from the now demolished

Calvinist Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...

chapel. It did not appear on

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

maps until 1912. Its placename is Welsh for "lowest mountain". Another old hamlet nearby was Pant-y-Fownog, on the same road nearer Buckley (centred on the Griffin Inn); although the name was used well into the 1900s on picture postcards of the area and by the local

Co-Op A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democr ...

shop next to the Inn. The name has long since become disused (except for lending its name to a road in nearby Buckley). Bryn-y-Baal is an old hamlet much enlarged since the 1970s and now contiguous with but not part of Mynydd Isa. Bryn-y-Baal takes its name from a

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

word ''"bale"'' (rhymes with "Carl" in arhotic British English) meaning small hill and Bryn (Welsh for hill), i.e. hill hill. It was later written in a

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic languages, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales by about 18% of the population, by some in England, and in (the Welsh c ...

form as 'bâl' with a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of ...

over the "â". In Welsh this is pronounced as a long A. This form appears on early Ordnance Survey maps. Eventually it was written in the

Anglicised Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

form 'Baal' – still correctly pronounced to rhyme with "Carl". In the area there is a secondary school known as Argoed High School in Bryn-y-Baal and a primary school Ysgol Mynydd Isa – the Junior department being in Bryn-y-Baal (formerly Ysgol y Bryn and before that Mynydd Isa Junior School), and the Infants department (formerly known as Wat's Dyke Infant School) on a separate site in Mynydd Isa. The local community council is Argoed Community Council (Cyngor Cymunedol Argoed) – Argoed being the name of the ancient township which had covered the area since the Middle Ages, which also gives its name to the local secondary school. Amenities include a pub, ''The Griffin'' on Mold Road. (''The Mercia'' on Mercia Drive closed in 2010, and is now a supermarket), various shops and the village centre which houses a cafe 'Caffi Isa', a community interest group located in the old library and other clubs and associations. In the same area there is a

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK r ...

Local, a Fish Bar, a dance school and more. The village has a large youth organisation (established in 1984) with football teams representing the village in the county league from 7 to 16 years old and adult football dating back to the 1930s; however the adult team disbanded in 2009.

References

External links

Photos of Mynydd Isa and surrounding area on geograph.org.uk
Villages in Flintshire {{Flintshire-geo-stub