Today we see and enjoy at Prestatyn a fine sandy beach, sand dunes, a four mile-long promenade, Victorian high street, golf club, caravan park resorts, fitness centre and cinema.
This is very different to what was here 2,000 years ago, when the Roman 20th Legion garrison (based at Chester) had an auxiliary fort here. A Roman bath house dating from this period was excavated in 1984, in what is now a residential road. Three rooms can be distinguished, and one of the tiles found had the imprint of a dog’s paw, from when a dog walked across the wet clay! This area was very important to the Romans because of the lead found around Meliden, just above the town. It is likely that the lead was processed locally before being shipped out from the port to Chester. After a gap of several hundred years, lead was mined again from the 13th Century until 1850, and this is celebrated in the Y Shed Museum in Meliden, along with the local quarrying industry.
The town’s Roman heritage was celebrated by the making of a sculpture of a Roman helmet, placed in the Hillside garden. It features sessile oak leaves and local High School pupils were involved in details of the decoration. Walkers reaching the end of – or just starting – the Offa’s Dyke path will pass it. The Offa’s Dyke long distance path runs for 177 miles from Prestatyn to Chepstow, on the Severn estuary.
From Prestatyn there are fine views, including to the country’s first off-shore wind farm, North Hoyle, five miles out to sea. Two miles (uphill) south of the town, the spectacular Dyserth waterfall drops 70 feet (21m). The historic walls nearby may have held a large waterwheel.