[7][9] A cymricized[4] form Groesffordd was in use by the 16th century, with "y groes ffordd", implying a meaning "crossroads", noted in a document of 1591.

[4] [7] This etymology was repeated in some 19th-century guidebooks; Samuel Lewis recorded the name was "anciently Croesfordd" which he translated as "the road to the cross".

Gresford is known to have been the site of an ancient Celtic church and a stand of yew trees in the churchyard has been dated to 500AD.

In common with many of the towns and villages of the England–Wales border or Marches, Gresford has gone through periods of both English and Welsh occupation during the Anglo-Welsh wars, being variously part of the Hundred of Duddestan and the cwmwd of Maelor Gymraeg;[15] The whole area was resettled by Welsh aligned to Owain Gwynedd in 1170–1203.

Gresford Church dates to 1492 and is a large building considering the size of what the population would have been in the present day boundaries of the parish.

Pant Iocyn (later Pant-yr-Ochain) house was built in the 1550s alongside the road from Gresford to Wrexham by Edward Almer, MP and three times High Sheriff of the county.

It was one of the chief houses in east Denbighshire and descended in the Almer family until it was bought and enlarged by Sir Foster Cunliffe, 3rd Baronet in 1785.

The bank was so steep that a refuge siding was required at the station in the event of engines having to leave some of their load behind to get up the hill.

It still uses part of the school building constructed in 1874,[19] in memory of Thomas Vowlier Short, a Christ Church, Oxford University theologian, and former Bishop of St Asaph.