Our Love Wrexham “Golden” issue has co-founder Adam Howarth reminiscing about the magazine’s history.
It seems like only yesterday we decided to take the huge step of starting out on our own.
Community Magazines
It was 2019, Stefan and I had just been made redundant and we were looking for something to do that would benefit Wrexham. An old colleague had left the same company a few years before and had gone into business on the Wirral and in Chester producing community magazines.
Stefan bumped into him on one occasion and they’d joked that he should start a magazine in Wrexham one day. We had also heard whispers about some people commenting in a local meeting that Wrexham needed a magazine to cover the town centre and the whole county.
We decided to give the magazine idea a go and started in earnest a couple of weeks later. Stefan and I came across the Enterprise Hub in Queen’s Square and when Carl, the manager, explained that the office space was all fully funded and the only prerequisite was that your business was registered in Wales, we realised we’d found Love Wrexham’s home from home!
Our first issue was bursting with local interest: we secured an exclusive interview with Barry Hayes from Brymbo. Barry had rowed across the Pacific Ocean and entertained us for about two hours as we listened to his amazing stories – it was quite a scoop.
We also featured Steve Booth, the creative force behind Coedpoeth-based Hotwood Gin. All in all, quite an impressive debut, we thought.
Fast forward four years and here we are. We’re no longer in the Hub and are due to move into new premises in August.
The Team
We’re a totally self-contained team. Stefan handles the creative side of things and most of the “techy” stuff. He’s also great with the accounts!
Niomi is our wonderful digital marketing executive and the creative force behind the very popular What’s On feature. I pick up the pieces of what’s left, namely the writing side of things and sales.
Stefan was born in Dusseldorf and had his first stint in Wrexham at LEGO in 1988. He studied Business and Marketing at Salford University from 1995 to 1997 and then moved back to Wrexham in 1997 to work at Kronospan and then MBNA in Chester.
Niomi lives in Plas Madoc and studied Graphic Design and Photography at Chester University. She started with us in September 2021.
Originally from near Manchester, I moved to Brymbo in 2012, shortly after also starting work at MBNA. I’d previously lived in London and Malaga.
It would be amiss to neglect to mention our fantastic contributors over the years. Karen Boyce of Beastly Thoughts Professional Dog Services and the indefatigable John Morris have been with us more or less from the beginning. A special mention to Menter Iaith as well for their fantastic Welsh language lessons.
Our long-term advertisers deserve a mention too. Active Childcare and Rees Jewellers have been with us since the very first edition, as have Beastly Thoughts, and Ellis Chaplin Ltd. Also, special shoutouts to Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham University, Slimming World and Coleg Cambria.
Memorable Stories
Our walk features have always been a popular aspect of our magazine. We used to take them from the council website but realised some of the directions were nearly 20 years old so we started creating them ourselves and going out and scouting them before publishing them in the magazine.
That saved a lot of misunderstanding and gave us peace of mind that our readers were heading along paths we had safely and carefully trodden before. Our particular favourites were the ones around Dolywern, and the extraordinary Fenn’s Moss.
If you’d like to see all of our walks, click here.
Four Years of Publishing
Here are a few more highlights from our four years of publishing Love Wrexham Magazine:
Sarah-Jane Ellis provided us with a particularly amusing moment when she reported how a delivery lorry got stuck trying to back out of Wrexham Lager. It shut down any traffic going along St George’s Crescent for a good couple of hours!
A one-off article from roving reporter Cassie Delaunay brought us a memorable story about local band The Royston Club playing London.
Our article about Rosemary Frankland, the Miss World from Wrexham, has been one of our most popular stories and still regularly tops the most-visited chart on our website.
We produced a Wrexham’s Most Haunted article back in 2019, which also created a lot of interest. The parts about Marford and Plas Teg were the ones I found most interesting.
The Wrexham AFC Hall of Fame listed the most famous players to pull on a Wrexham shirt and included superstars such as George Best, Ian Rush and Mark Hughes!
We’ve seen a lot happen in just four years. Wrexham is now a city and nearly became a “county of culture”. A couple of A-list celebrities have taken over the football club, and Glyndŵr is now called Wrexham University, which is undertaking a major facelift.
There is a huge feel-good factor in the city and county these days and developments such as Wrexham University’s Campus 2025 and Wrexham Gateway mean that our local landscape could look very different in the next four years to how it does now.
To keep up to date with the community, click here.
