Dylan Thomas’ Boathouse - Laugharne
South Wales, Late Winter 2019
On a hot day in 1934, a 19-year-old Dylan Thomas walked with a friend along a marshy headland jutting out into the tidal estuary of the river Taf. The young poet set out to visit the small town of Laugharne and had walked three or so miles through undulating countryside, a seemingly deserted landscape. The mile-wide waters of the Taf came into view where it enters Carmarthen Bay. They would cross it by ferry-boat, summoning the ferryman from the far shore by tolling a bell that hung from a tiny stone building to which the path across the marsh had led. Across the sand-banked estuary and at the foot of the red cliffs, Dylan spotted two isolated white cottages at the water’s edge, illuminated by the bright sun. One belonged to the ferryman, the other was later to become the poet’s home for the last four years of his life – the Boathouse.
In 1938, a year after they were married, Dylan and his wife Caitlin moved to Laugharne where they lived in two different properties before moving away again after the outbreak of the Second World War. By 1949, the Thomas’ were ready to settle down after years of moving from place to place and were able to return to Laugharne thanks to one of Dylan’s major benefactors purchasing the Boathouse and giving it to the family. Dylan could finally call the cottage that had drawn him in from across the water ‘home’. ‘My seashaken house/On a breakneck of rocks,’ he described in the poem Prologue.
Dylan once labelled Laugharne ‘the strangest town in Wales’. I pondered this when we drove down the main street past the church, cottages, a handful of shops, some elegant Georgian houses, a couple of pubs and an ancient town hall. The road opens up at the bottom of the hill and ends with a car park beneath the imposing ruins of a bulky castle, slowly reclaimed by the land and circled by crows. The fortress faces a great, broad sweep of water, a landscape once painted by Turner with a real beauty that changes with the weather. It is a haven for lapwings, herons, seals and otters; a place where fishermen and cocklers can continue their ancient traditions. Looking back along the estuary, the white rear of the Boathouse stands out on stilt-like supports in the distance, beckoning its poetic pilgrims.
We parked up in the shadow of the castle and approached the Boathouse along a wide stone-paved causeway that skirted the cliffs, only navigable at low-tide. It was strewn with clumps of tangled seaweed and slippery in parts, never quite afforded enough time to dry out before being seized by the sea and turned into its bed. Across the snaking mud channels, wading seabirds picked eagerly at the shells of cockles and snails in the shallows, while boats slumped on their sides like swelling beached whales. Despite the gauge of ominous clouds, the rain held off. We were rewarded with moody views in a heavy silver light that made the patterns of lichens glow upon the rocks.
We reached a flight of steep steps cut into the cliffs through brown hues of bracken and bramble, that looked to end with a ramshackle wooden shack, teetering on the edge above. The climb revealed that the shed was in fact well attended, its front freshly painted in licks of green. A tourist information sign confirmed its landmark status as Dylan’s writing haven, his place of escape.
During their time at the Boathouse, Dylan and Caitlin’s fiery conflicts, the stress of supporting a family without a steady income combined with Dylan’s reckless nature, meant that they fell into serious debt. Alongside this, Dylan’s work was growing in popularity and garnered critical acclaim that came with trips to America, which Dylan utilised as a means to run away from his amounting troubles. It was during his fourth trip and following a bout of heavy drinking that Dylan tragically died in New York at the age of 39. In the final years of his strained life at the Boathouse, Dylan carved out his own sanctuary a short walk away in the shape of an old wooden garage. Here he spent long days guarding his privacy and writing some of his most famous works, drawing inspiration from the panoramic views; wild shores replete with solitude.
I am always compelled by creative workspaces, artists’ studios and writers’ desks, dedicated spaces for a craft. Caitlin has said that Dylan would disappear to his shed from two until seven most days. Often she would lock the door behind him, if Dylan hadn’t already. He would emerge bleary eyed with a perfectly crafted line or two of poetry. Meticulous hours spent on a single sentence, sealed off from his confinements and exposed only to the waves. There is certainly something about being by large masses of water that spurs creativity. Peering through the peephole cut into the front of the shed, it wasn’t difficult to see where Dylan found inspiration in Laugharne. It flooded in through the windows, carried by what he called a ‘Bible-black sea’.
The shed has been window dressed to look as if Dylan has just popped to the pub for a pint or two. Whitewashed pine boarded walls and ceiling, a wooden floor with a scrap of rug laid down in front of the wood burning stove. I imagined Dylan edging his chair closer to it on long and cold winter nights, when the gales would shake the shack, whistling through the windows. A wooden desk faces south across the miles of mud flats where a simple chair lolls with his jacket half slumped over it. Overflowing from the waste paper basket, balls of screwed up sheets litter the floor and pages fan across the desk. An exercise book lays open scrawled with crossings out, alongside an inkwell, blotting paper and a coffee stained Cornishware mug, its blue and white stripes whirling like the surging tide just beyond the window. The walls display a gallery of poet’s pin ups, cut out periodicals, unfurling lists of alliterative words, even a painting of Dylan himself. On a sunny day it would be a blissful spot. But equally easy to see the effects of a stormy one here. The first poem Dylan wrote in his writing shed was allegedly Over Sir John’s Hill. It describes the view from the shed; hoisted clouds, whacks of wind, birds stalking their prey, bringing death in the midst of beauty, titled headstones in the Towy river below.
From the shed, we followed a narrow path further along the clifftops, now signposted as Dylan’s Walk. A woodland contained by a high stone wall flanked the path to the left, across from railings which protect from sheer drops to the estuary below. A break in the railings revealed a flight of steps looking down on the slate roof of the Boathouse. We passed through a small garden where a twisted washing line hung between two trees, airing Dylan’s look alike clothes in the salty sea breeze.
The cottage was an actual boathouse once. Old photos show boats dry docked where visitors now drink tea and tuck into Welsh cakes from the tearooms picnic tables. During the highest spring tides, the waters of the Taf still invade the black wooden veranda that stretches around two sides of the house and have even been known to breach the sitting room.
Like the writing shed, the Boathouse has been restored in parts to reflect how it was when Thomas family lived here. After purchasing our tickets in the tiny gift shop, we were greeted by authentic 1940-50s décor in the drawing room. Here family snapshots deck the walls and Dylan’s dark brown eyes follow you around the room. A notice explains that much of the original furniture was sold by Caitlin towards ever-advancing demands for money. However, the desk that claims its rightful place by the window belonged to Dylan’s father and migrated from his childhood home. Visitors can now pause here and add their own accounts to the frequented guest book; tributes to the place where the stability of a permanent home gave way for Dylan’s creative renaissance, however stormy at times.
Under the roof, the main bedroom is now an exhibition space with mementos of Dylan’s life and a short film. Dylan’s words echoed around the room from radio readings that have immortalised his rich and resonant tones. It is a great little place to have a nose around, humble and understated, thus leaving scope for imagining life here. Every room has its own striking view across the shimmering sands to the Black Scar headland and old ruined bell house. I would love to return at a rising tide for a swim from here, to be carried by the ebb and flow of the estuary.
After a pot of tea on the veranda we walked back into the village centre along Dylan’s Walk, retracing his constitutional jaunts to the Browns Hotel, a former Georgian pub now renovated as a bar with guest rooms. It was here that Dylan jotted verse and downed pints from his corner table. The bar was closed when we passed by but from what I could see through the windows, it looked like your average refurbished watering hole of today. Foundational wooden beams and panelling intact, but sadly in a room now dwarfed by a wide-screen television above the fireplace in place of its former dartboard. Instead we stopped for refreshments a few doors up the high street at a lovely little deli and family-run café called The Ferryman. From here we carried on up the hill to Laugharne’s church and sloping graveyard. Beyond an impressive canopy of yews and over a little bridge you can find Dylan’s grave, joined by Caitlin under a bold white cross and mound of fresh flowers. Inside the church a plaque bears an inscription from one of his poems Fern Hill ‘Time held me green and dying/ Though I sang in my chains like the sea’.
Ambling back through the town we stopped at a rambling antique shop housed in one of the whitewashed cobbled cottages on the high street. As with everyone that we had crossed paths with in the town, the owner was chatty and kind. I found a delightful old mug with ribbed stripes and a red handle that happily transports me back to Laugharne with every hot drink at home.
I was content that the town still had that curious way about it that the 19-year-old aspiring poet had once described after arriving by ferry. It has escaped being totally tamed by the heritage industry and persists to be a little time warp with a handful of unusual characters pottering around. I can see why Dylan was drawn back again and again. He was a man with a love for the sea, pub-culture and stories. Laugharne provided it all. A mystical spot with a ruined castle on the edge of the ocean, complete now with a compelling literary connection. It was the ‘word-splashed’ writing shed and its estuary views that I especially fell for. In Dylan’s words, Laugharne is ‘a legendary, lazy little black magical bedlam by the sea.’ ‘There is nowhere like it, anywhere at all’.
