Welsh Journals

EDUCATION IN MONTGOMERYSHIRE. DR. J. A. DAVIES, M.A., B.SC. PREFACE The present county corresponds closely to the mediaeval Welsh principality of Powys Wenwynwyn, its Poet Prince, Owain Gyfeiliog, founding a monastic settlement at Strata Marcella (Ystrad Marchell) in 117o. The copy of the Mabinogion known as "Llyfr Gwyn Rhyderch" and a copy of "The Life of Gruffydd ap Cynan", together with a collection of early Welsh poetry, were produced at this abbey but the dissolution of Ystrad Marchell led to the dispersion both of the monks and its literary treasures. In the era of the Grammar Schools, there appears to have been only one of any size within the county, Deytheur, this lack of provision possibly being due to the proximity of the two Grammar Schools across the border at Oswestry and Shrewsbury. The Seventeenth Century saw the rise of Puritanism in the county and during the Commonwealth period the Parliamentary Captain, Vavasor Powell, who lived at Kerry from 1648 to 1660, was instrumental in procuring an Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales which can be described as an Education Act for Wales and which resulted in free schools being established in all the Welsh counties. Montgomeryshire, at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to one of the greatest educationists of all time, Robert Owen of Ne vvtown, who re- garded education as a measure of social regeneration and who has been described as the father of elementary education as we know it today, and whose Infants School, opened in 1816, was the first of its kind in Britain. According to the records the first Sunday School in Wales was held at Crowlwm, near Llanidloes, in 1770, established by one of Madam Bevan's schoolmasters sixteen years before the Sunday Schools were to become fairly general in Wales. Three men who at various times served as Members of Parliament played a significant part in the development of Welsh Intermediate and Higher Edu- cation in the nineteenth century; Mr. Stuart (later Lord) Rendel M.P. was successful in introducing the Bill to promote Intermediate Education in Wales, the Welsh Intermediate Act of 1889 resulting in the provision of a new and comprehensive pattern of Secondary Education in Wales. Mr. A. C. Humphreys-