We are fortunate that William Henry Greene gathered together his 'treasures' in this volume. Pasted into the pages we find newspaper articles, poetry and sketches - the results of William's rambles in Monmouthshire and South West Gloucestershire.

William was born in Ross in 1832. In his early 20s he became a reporter for the Monmouthshire Beacon; from 1867 to 1874 he worked for the Pontypool Free Press and Herald of the Hills; and at other times he worked for journals as far afield as Bristol, Chard, Exeter, Gloucester and Guildford. He continued his work after retirement and contributed articles and illustrations to The Graphic and The Illustrated London News.

Towards the end of his life, William lived in Chepstow and he died in Newport at 109 Alma Street on March 31st 1894. The South Wales Daily Star reported: "Death was due to general decay of the system, the end being hastened by an attack of apoplexy."

Some of William's sketches have already appeared in publications. Reginald Nichols included several in Volume 4 of his Monmouthshire Medley series and, currently, the excellent Gathering The Jewels website (www.gtj.org.uk) is displaying a small selection. Newport Past is bringing you the opportunity to view many more.

The scrapbook is in the collection of Pontypool Museum; all images displayed from it here are copyright © Newport Past 2004. They were photographed by arrangement with Torfaen Museum Trust - the project being financed by sponsorship. We are keen to bring more of the nation's art treasures to public view by this means, if you are interested in sponsoring a similar project please contact us. There are many sketches and watercolours tucked away from the light in museum basements, many of which show scenes long since disappeared. On a recent visit to the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff we found no antiquarian watercolours on display.

Most of the sketches in William's scrapbook date from the later years of his life. Two were executed in January 1894 just a few months before his death. We have organised them here by subject rather than date or order in his scrapbook. If William gave the picture a title we include that text within quotation marks. If the text is not within quotation marks this denotes that there was no title for the picture and that the description is our own. Any word which could not clearly be distinguished is included within brackets with a question mark after it. We also denote the page on which the sketch was pasted.