The Cefnbrith Cupboard

A Welsh wall cupboard, unusually of beechwood with a warm, fruitwood-like colour, fitted with an internal drawer below two adjustable shelves and enclosed by a single glazed door with an elaborate pattern of glazing bars. Breconshire/Carmarthenshire, circa 1840-60.

Dimensions:

73 cms wide at the cornice, 93 cms high, 28 cms deep.

Provenance:

Cefnbrith, a farm near Llangamarch in northwest Breconshire is generally considered to be the birthplace of John Penry, the Puritan martyr. Born in 1563, educated at Cambridge and Oxford, he was hanged for sedition in 1593.
It wasnt until the 19th century though, and the emergence of Nonconformity as a powerful force in the culture and politics of Wales, that John Penry became a Nonconformist and Welsh hero and, in turn, Cefnbrith a site of pilgrimage. David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited in 1913. To mark the occasion, the Williams family, tenants at Cefnbrith, provided a visitors book which he signed.

The display cupboard formed part of the dispersal sale of the contents of the house which took place in October 2018 when the Williams family relinquished their tenancy of Cefnbrith after more than 150 years.