Before 1850, Johnstown was a small settlement strung along the turnpike road between Wrexham and Ruabon, centred on a handful of inns including the New Inn and Travellers Rest. Rows of collier's housing, including Derby Terrace on Moreton Street, were built before 1870 as the coal industry began to reshape the settlement into a proper industrial village.
The Ruabon Coal and Coke Company opened Hafod Colliery at Johnstown in 1867, replacing the earlier Ruabon Colliery after it was closed by flooding. Also known as Hafod-y-Bwch, the pit operated from 1860 to 1968 and at its peak employed around 1,900 people from Johnstown and the neighbouring communities of Rhosllanerchrugog and Ponciau — part of the wider coalfield described in Coal Mining Around Ruabon.
Alongside the colliery, the Cornish engineer Henry Dennis founded a clay works at Hafod, drawing on the same seam of industrial development that produced Ruabon Red terracotta a few miles away. The nearby clay quarry was later used as a landfill site, receiving waste shipped in from as far away as Liverpool.
When Hafod Colliery finally closed on 9 March 1968, most of its roughly 1,300 remaining workers were either made redundant or transferred to the Bersham or Gresford collieries. The pit's former coal tip has since been reclaimed and transformed into Bonc yr Hafod, a country park that gives today's visitors green, open access to ground that was once one of the district's busiest industrial sites.
Bonc yr Hafod country park, on the site of the former colliery tip, is open to the public free of charge at any time, with walking paths across the reclaimed landscape. Johnstown is a short drive or bus ride from Ruabon via Wrexham.
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