Many believe that the idyllic boat house at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire was the keeper of Dylan Thomas’ raging villanelles and stories. It seems however, that an Edwardian period house on the right side of Swansea would have something to say about this. Thomas wrote the majority of his work in his formative years, 20 of which he spent at Number 5. After the Thomas family’s departure, the house has taken on many an unlikely guise, including a dejected looking student bed-sit, where more reading from cereal boxes rather than anthologies was probably accomplished. Since then, a couple with a concern for the ‘son of Swansea’s’ heritage have decided to restore the property into the style of self catering accommodation set in 1914, the year of Thomas’s birth. In effort to capture the initial images which framed the poet’s thoughts and later life, the Edwardian period has been reintroduced. Emerald green walls surround a phonogram and upstairs a cast iron toilet stands in the same room were Thomas would have had his first shave. Upon arrival you’ll receive a copy of a 1914 newspaper and enter an age defiant of change where no televisions, radios or phones exist. 5 Cwmdonkin Drive plans to host literary events as well, and it seems that in this terraced house overlooking the tides of Swansea, there is no better place to start.

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Written by  Sybilla Harvey.

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