Nantglyn is a small village around four and a half miles from Denbigh, its name meaning 'the stream in the valley' — a reference to the Afon Lliwen, which once powered several corn and fulling mills in the parish. The settlement appears in written records as early as 1254, under the name Nantlym, in the Norwich Taxation, and again in 1291 as Nantclyn.
The village's parish church is dedicated to St James, extensively rebuilt in 1777 and again in Victorian times, though Nantglyn is the only parish in Wales whose historic patron was St Mordeyrn. Several Nonconformist chapels — Capel-y-Waen, Capel Soar and Capel Salem among them — once served the village's religious life alongside the parish church.
Nantglyn's best-known connection is literary: it gave its name to the poet and interlude-writer Thomas Edwards, better known as Twm o'r Nant, who grew up nearby. The village also produced a footnote to one of history's great voyages of exploration — David Samwell (1751–98), born here, served as ship's surgeon aboard HMS Discovery on Captain Cook's final expedition, and was present in Hawaii in 1779 when Cook was killed.
Nantglyn is a small upland village on the western edge of the Denbighshire hills, its scattered farms and chapel reflecting a landscape shaped by centuries of hill farming rather than the market-town economy of the Vale of Clwyd below. The village sits at a noticeably higher, wilder elevation than Denbigh itself, and the surrounding moorland and forestry give it a quieter, more remote character.
Nantglyn's isolation has helped it retain a strong sense of Welsh-language community life, and its position makes it a useful starting point for walkers wanting to explore the less-visited hill country to the south and west of Denbigh, away from the more popular Clwydian Range routes.