Welsh Journals

Since then he has been transferred from Abbey Cwm Hir, and is now difficult of access. The Reverend Stedman Davies has very kindly taken up the enquiry locally; but the finder appears to be still as secretive as ever. And so the matter remains. It is all very mysterious, and, from an archaelogical point of view, very unsatisfactory. 4. NOTE ON No. 10 IN THE SCHEDULE. The following unpublished particulars in the story of the stone axe referred to in the above entry may be worth placing on record. Mr. John Davies, 10, Cambrian Place, Aberystwyth, tells me that it was he who, in 1897 or 1898, while walking from Rhayader to Llanidloes, bought the axe from its finder, a carpenter (apparently from the Royal Commission Inventory, No. 604, Mr. Edward Hope, Maes y derring, St. Harmons). Shortly afterwards Mr. Davies parted with the axe to Mr. H. Davies-Evans, Highmead, Llanybyther, Cardiganshire, and at Highmead it was when the Inspecting Officers of the Royal Commission saw it on September 9, 1912. Mr. Davies's story of the discovery is slightly at variance with that given in the Inventory. Since, however, the account in the Inventory was given to the Commissioners by Mr. H. Davies-Evans who, in all pro- bability, could only have had it from Mr. Davies at the time that the axe was handed over, I think that we may place more trust in Mr. Davies's account given then than in one given from memory now after a lapse of some thirty years. In the hope of being able to examine and measure the implement, I paid a visit to Highmead in the autumn of 1938, but I found that the mansion is now uninhabited, and I could not obtain permission to enter it in order to investigate whether the implement was still there. I afterwards wrote to Mr. George Eyre Evans about the axe, but he has informed me that he knows nothing of its present whereabouts. He last saw it in 1912 when, as an Inspecting Officer under the Royal Com- mission, he visited Highmead. Then it was in a glass-fronted cupboard in one of the passages in the house.