Welsh Journals

purposes, who had never even been to Parkmill. The cultural ties of the Welshery were landward, whence they received their itinerant preachers, carriers of news and scholarship. In the restricted isolation of a peninsula community, old customs and ways were perpetuated and today, in this Americanized world, give us pleasure. The Gower chest once designed was copied and kept, and may well have been an expression of former yearnings for a lost cause. Ionverth Hughes Jones. THE PENCLAWDD CANAL IN His Topographical Dictionary of Wales, published in 1833, Samuel Lewis wrote of the small cut called the Penclawdd canal, in the northern part of Gower, constructed about the year 1812, formerly the means of conveying excellent bituminous coal to vessels lying in the Burry river but now disused." The first mention of a Penclawdd Canal and Railway or Tram-Road appeared in the Cambrian Weekly Adviser for June 13, 1812. This was an announce- ment that the Annual General Assembly of the Company of Pro- prietors would take place at the Guildhall, Swansea, on July 6, and was signed D. Davies, Clerk to the Company, Morriston." Evidently the necessary Act of Parliament had been passed early in 1812. A second notice, printed in the Cambrian for July 12, 1812, by John Jeffreys, Clerk to the Committee, read "A Further Call of Five Pounds on each Share in this Undertaking was this day made by the Committee, who have directed the same to be paid on or before 4th. day of August next." The course of construction of the canal