History
This exceptionally well-preserved mid-C16 cruck framed hall-house has a three-unit plan with former open hall in centre, cross passage and service bay at lower end, and a second chamber, probably a parlour, at upper end. In front of the chimneystack, the exterior wall studs of the timber-framed walls are more broadly spaced, suggesting that the big hall chimney stack is contemporary with the original hall-house, and not added later. In the late C16 a floor was inserted in the hall. Subsequently, probably in C18, the gable crucks were removed, and each end-gable rebuilt in brick. Since then, apart from some refenestration, there have been few changes.
The attached Quaker Meeting House dates from the late C17. The early Welsh Quaker, Walter Jenkins (son of Thomas Jenkins, squire and rector of Llanfihangel-ystern-llewern), was born at the Pant. The passing of the Conventicle Act in 1592 had made clandestine religious meetings illegal. The Quakers, in common with other dissenters, were forced to meet in secret in private houses and it is very likely the Pant was used for Quaker meetings. Walter Jenkins was a prominent Quaker who in 1655 met George Fox and two years later accompanied Fox on his visit to South Wales. However, in January 1660 Jenkins was arrested and, after refusing to take the oath, imprisoned at Monmouth. He died in May 1661.
A more permissive attitude to non-conformists worship came after the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689. Walter Jenkin's daughter, Elizabeth, subsequently married John Beadles, a Quaker who came from Kempston in Bedfordshire. Beadles probably built the meeting house at the Pant sometime in the 1690s. Quaker services continued here up to the end of C18. Later the house was owned by the historian and antiquary Sir Joseph Bradney, author of the celebrated nine part ‘History of Monmouthshire'.