Exterior of Boathouse
Photographer’s note: I visited years ago. His writing hut is just above on a cliff overhanging the boathouse. There is a narrow track just wide enough for one person to climb to the top. As that person reaches the top and steps off the path there is the wooden hut still with his personal belongings and coat hanging on a chair as if he has just gone out to water the bushes.
________________________________________________________________________
Interior of Dylan Thomas’ Writing Hut Above the Boathouse
Photographer’s note: Its a pokey little hut, a grubby hut. My photograph, a hurried shot, on a hot day doesn’t do the place justice. You should see my study, just the same. Are writers universally untidy. Do they cast rumpled discarded papers on the floor. Do they all drink alcoholic beverages to keep them going through the writing process. On a hot day he could open the window looking over the marsh, he could hear hedge warbler call and the overhead larks weaving in and out in song. He could hear the waves at Ginst Point, hear the pebbles move to the pounding of the waves. He was free there from interruption, there were few cars to bother him with noise, even fewer would take the track past the hut. He could water the bushes when need be, unseen by any intrusive eye. And at end of day when tired he could step outside to take the narrow near-suicidal steep path down to the boathouse for his tea.
________________________________________________________________________
Editor’s note: The Boathouse in Laugharne, Wales, was where Dylan Thomas lived with his family during his last four years between 1949 and 1953. The house is set in a cliff overlooking the Tâf estuary and is where he wrote many of his major pieces.
