Welsh Journals

and views thereon keeping closely in mind if it be not let to those persons that it is to be confined to Education alone and that no creeds or Catechism be introduced and nothing but simply read- ing and writing and arithmetic as recommended by Joseph Lancaster2 to be taught therein'. It later transpired that the 'some persons' who had been applying for the use of the building were Mr. Capel Hanbury Leigh, Mr. Watkin George and Mr. Robert Smith.3 These three gentlemen declined the offer to rent the meeting house premises as a school presumably owing to the restrictive conditions laid down but they then tried to negotiate its lease with a view to adaptation as a dwelling-house. Again no agreement could be made possibly due to their objection to a clause forbidding 'the establishment of a Public House or liberty to anyone to sell ale, porter or other liquor on forfeiture of the lease'. In 1834 the property was rented by Rev. John Probert, a curate at Panteg Church, though for what purpose is not clear. The property seems to have been unaffected by the building of the Mon- mouthshire Canal, which passed very near in its course from Newport to Pontnewynydd, and was opened for traffic in February 1796. Though the Pontymoile Quaker Meeting-house escaped the attentions of the canal constructors in 1796 ('We are all canal mad these days' wrote one local industrial magnate at the time) it fell victim in 1854 to the engineers involved in another craze of the day, railway-building; the Taff Vale Extension line from Newport to Swansea via Pontypool and Crumlin necessitated its demolition and a penetration of the burial- ground. (Miraculously, a very small portion of the building escaped the depredations of the 19th century bulldozer and three walls remain to this day, about 5ft. high and covered with ivy and brambles, immediately opposite Maesderwyn House on the far side of the old railway track. Alas! even these scant vestigial relics of a far-off religious community will soon be no more. They are doomed to succumb to the craze of the 1970's-ring-road making-and will not survive long into 1980. ('We are all motorway mad these days' might well be the nostalgic sigh of the country-lover.) After a long and seemingly hopeless search for a picture of the meeting-house I nearly despaired of a happy end to my quest when, after almost ten years and quite out of the blue, my efforts were rewarded with unexpected and total success. Some two years ago I found, almost accidentally, in Friends House Library, London, two water colour paintings and a pencil sketch of the Pontymoile Meeting-house; as a gift of supererogation or bonus for my pertinacity there was also pre- sented for my delight a painting of the (later) Trosnant Meeting-house (of which more anon). I felt like a dog with, not two, but three tails. These were all the work of a Birmingham Quaker artist, Henry Newman, and were carried out on '4th of 10th month' 1854. It is a fair guess that local Quakers, in the knowledge that their ancient tabernacle was doomed to destruction, had invited him to visit them and to depict for posterity this tangible attestation of the faith and devotion of their spiritual ancestors. Their foresight was wholly in keeping with the Quaker tradition of making and preserving records, a duty urged upon them as