Very rare painted / decorated canal police Constable's truncheon. Paintwork details show VR1....so very early in the reign of Queen Victoria c.1840. As theft and pilfering was always a problem, canal companies employed their own policemen.

The canals were profitable. Coal traffic rose from 3,500 tons in 1796 to 150,000 tons in 1809, but the arrival of the railways brought about serious decline, and in the 1850s, several schemes to abandon the canals were proposed.

The Monmouthshire Canal Company, which had become the Monmouthshire Railway and Canal Company under an Act of Parliament obtained in 1845, bought out the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal Company in 1865, but the move came too late, and the Monmouthshire Canal gradually closed.

Control of the canals passed to the Great Western Railway in 1880, and they were consequently nationalised in 1948