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St Giles' church stands at the centre with a tower of 136 feet, begun in 1506 and counted in the old rhyme among the seven wonders of Wales. The churchyard around it is worth ten minutes on its own.

Out past the houses the country starts quickly. Erddig lies on the southern edge with its gardens, the Clywedog valley runs west from there, and the Clwydian hills are twenty minutes further on.

Elihu Yale is buried in the churchyard at St Giles. Yale University in Connecticut carries his name because his gift of four hundred books and nine bales of goods got the college on its feet in 1718. He never went back to America to see it.

He wrote his own epitaph and it is still legible on the tomb. It begins: born in America, in Europe bred, in Africa travell'd and in Asia wed. He died in London in 1721 and was brought back here to be buried.

The church behind him earns its own time. Work on the tower began in 1506, it stands 136 feet, and it carries four hexagonal turrets and some thirty carved niches around it. Simon Jenkins called the building the glory of the Marches.

An old rhyme still lists the seven wonders of Wales and this tower is one of them. It runs: Pistyll Rhaeadr and Wrexham steeple, Snowdon's mountain without its people, Overton yew trees and St Winefride wells, Llangollen bridge and Gresford bells.

The university liked the tower enough to copy it. Saybrook College still keeps a Wrexham Tower modelled on the one over his grave, and a stone from the Welsh church sits in its wall.

You can go up it on the first Saturday of the month, at eleven or twelve, for five pounds a head. The climb takes about fifty minutes and you need to be eight or over. Only twenty go up at a time and the places go quickly, so book ahead.

Erddig lies just south of the built-up part, a country house the National Trust looks after, and you can walk its gardens down towards the Clywedog valley. From there the river path runs west for miles on the flat.

Four of the seven wonders in that rhyme sit within an hour of here, which is a fair return for one small corner of the country. Llangollen bridge is the nearest of them, about twenty minutes south-west along the valley, and you can stand on it.