Trefeca

The opening of the college coincided with the expulsion from St Edmund Hall, Oxford of six students because of their alleged Methodist leanings.

The use of the term 'college' set Trevecca apart from the Dissenting Academies, but was controversial in the mid-eighteenth century, implying some measure of equivalence with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

[4] Thomas Charles, a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist had tried to arrange for taking over the Trevecca College buildings when the trustees of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion removed their seminary to Cheshunt in 1792; but the Bala revival broke out just at the time, and, when things grew quieter, other matters pressed for attention.

Candidates for the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connexional ministry were compelled to shift for themselves until 1837, when Lewis Edwards (1809–1887) and David Charles (1812–1878) opened a school for young men at Bala.

[5] In 1905 David Davies of Llandinam, one of the leading laymen in the Connexion, offered a large building at Aberystwyth as a gift to the denomination for the purpose of uniting North and South in one theological college; but in the event of either association declining the proposal, the other was permitted to take possession, giving the association that should decline the option of joining at a later time.

The Association of the South accepted, and that of the North declined, the offer; Trevecca College was turned into a preparatory school on the lines of a similar institution set up at Bala in 1891.