the King, but local landowner Sir Thomas Myddelton, owner of Chirk Castle, supported Parliament. 18th and 19th centuries In the 18th century, Wrexham was known for its leather industry with skinners and tanners in the then town. The horns from cattle were used to make things like combs and buttons. There was also a nail-making industry in Wrexham but in the mid-18th century, Wrexham was no more than a small market town with a population of perhaps 2,000. In the late 18th century Wrexham was transformed by the coming of the industrial revolution. It began when the famous entrepreneur John Wilkinson (1728–1808) known as 'Iron Mad Wilkinson' opened Bersham Ironworks in 1762. In 1793 he opened a smelting plant at Brymbo. Wrexham gained its first newspaper in 1848. Market Hall was built in the same year. In 1849 Wrexham was described as: "A market town, a parliamentary borough, the head of a Union, and a parish, chiefly in the hundred of Bromfield, county of Denbigh; 26 miles (SE by E) from Denbigh, 18 (ESE) from Ruthin, and 187½ (NW) from London; ..... and containing 12,921 inhabitants, of whom 5818 are in the townships of Wrexham Abbot and Wrexham Regis, forming the town." Wrexham was connected to the rest of the UK by rail in 1849 and this eventually became a large and complex network of railways, the main branch being the Wrexham and Minera Branch, which supported the steelworks at nearby Brymbo Steel Mill and the Minera Limeworks. In 1895, the Wrexham and Ellesmere Railway was completed and cut a swathe through the city centre. In 1863 a volunteer fire brigade was founded. Wrexham benefitted from good underground water supplies which were essential to the brewing of good beer and brewing became one of its main industries. In the middle of the 19th century, there were 19 breweries in and around the city Several of these were comparatively large breweries, together with many smaller breweries situated at local inns. Some of the more famous old breweries were the Albion, Cambrian, Eagle, Island Green, Nag's Head (Soames) and Willow. However, the most famous was the Wrexham Lager brewery which was built between 1881 and 1882 in Central Road. This was the first brewery to be built in the United Kingdom to produce lager beer. Another major producer, Border Breweries, was formed in 1931 by a merger of Soames, Island Green, and