Casgliadau Arlein

Wheeled stocks, used at Dolgellau, Merionethshire between 1788 and 1866. Stocks were in general use from the middle ages for the correction of petty crimes such as begging , vagrancy and drunkenness. [caption used in Material Culture Gallery].

At the Easter Quarter Sessions for Merioneth, 1788 "it was ordered that all the inhabitants of the Parish of Dolgelly do pay the sum of Ten pounds and four shillings unto Griffith Griffiths and John Evans late Constables of the Town of Dolgelly towards paying Richard Jones and Edward Jones, contractors for making a New Stock and Ducking Stool in the Town of Dolgelly" At the Michaelmas Sessions the same year "It was ordered that Mary Lewis a Prisoner tried and convicted at this Quarter Sessions for stealing one pair of sheets the property of William Williams (landlord of the Royal Ship Hotel) of the Value of tenpence be carried from hence to the place from whence she came from, and there to be imprisoned till the twenty second day of November next, and on that Day that she be Publickly whiped by the Stocks in the Town of Dolgelly and afterwards discharged" (Source: A. Stanley Davies, Archaeologia Cambrensis. 91 (1936), 150)