By the time of the Roman invasion (47 AD), the area was part of the lands occupied by the Cornovii, one of the tribes of ancient Britain who had their principal settlement at the Wrekin.

[4] At the time of the Norman invasion the area was part of ancient Cheshire, within the Hundred of Duddeston,[5] and it later became the estate of (and gave its name to) the prominent Hanmer family, who were descended from Sir Thomas de Macclesfield, an officer of Edward I.

[6] Sir Thomas settled in English Maelor (Welsh: Maelor Saesneg) and his family consolidated their possessions in the area through a series of marriages to heiresses of important Welsh families.

The oldest recorded reference to a church in Hanmer dates from 1110, though this building was destroyed in 1463 during the Wars of the Roses.

Until the reorganisation of Welsh local government on 1 April 1974, Hanmer was in the detached part of the historic county of Flintshire known as English Maelor.