Welsh Journals

BOOK REVIEWS Monmouth and the Somersets by Dr. John Sleigh. Published by Monmouth Field and Antiquarian Society. Price £ 1.50. Available from Monmouth Museum. Local History enthusiasts in those areas of Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire which were once part of the Beaufort estates, will learn much to add to their appreciation of the social history of their own locality from this booklet by Dr. John Sleigh, who has skilfully condensed over 300 years of history into less than 20 pages. His interest in what he calls "the silent witnesses" led Dr. Sleigh to the research forming an assignment for an Open University Arts Degree course, of which this booklet is an extended version. The first Earl of Somerset was the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, and by their loyalty to the Crown the family became the largest land owners in the district, until 1902, when on the death of the 8th Duke of Beaufort the Monmouth estates were sold to pay off debts resulting from the late Duke's extravagant pastimes, which included regular race meetings on the Chippenham, at Monmouth. Through their hold over the local burgesses, the Somersets were to hold the Parliamentary seats for Monmouth town or county for the best part of three centuries. The story of the conflict between the burgesses and the power of their hereditary overlords, until the national demand for electoral reform in the 19th century and the Reform Act of 1884 finally broke the Somerset hold on the county seat, makes quite compulsive reading. There are a few illustrations, and the genealogical and chronological tables added as an appendix will be a great help to those readers who may find the numerous names and dates difficult to sort out at the first reading. C.E.F. James Street Methodist Church, Ebbw Vale: A History of Methodism by Keith Thomas. Published by Kerin Publishers, Ebbw Vale, 64 pp. £ 3. Any understanding of South Wales history would be incomplete without an appreciation of the influence that 'chapel' has played on the shaping of the local mining and steel-making communities. This influence spreads to topography too-valley towns have traditionally been characterised by the chapel standing at many of the street corners. Methodism in general is well studied in Britain, not least because of its coincidental rise with the working class in the early period of the Industrial Revolution (E.P. Thompson has written extensively on this in The Making of the English Working Class, Penguin Books, 1963). What is less common however, is the detailed study of particular Methodist