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Although Dylan’s mother Florence was born in St Thomas, Swansea, her family had its roots in the villages and farms of the Llansteffan peninsula. Florence’s relations lived in the rural communities around Llangain, Llansteffan, Llanybri and Llangynog. Llansteffan was home to the Edwinsford Arms a public house that features in Dylan’s story A Visit to Grandpa’s, as does the village of Llansteffan. Fern Hill farm (see own listing) is close to Llangain, and the matriarch of Fern Hill, Dylan’s Auntie Ann Jones, and her husband, are buried at Llanybri. Dylan was a regular visitor to the area during his childhood and he was still visiting the area in the 1950s.

When we came to Llanstephan village at the top of the hill, he left the cart by the Edwinsford Arms and patted the pony’s muzzle and gave it sugar, saying: ‘You’re a weak little pony, Jim, to pull big men like us.’

Blaen Cwm are a pair of cottages that belonged to Dylan’s mother’s family. Dylan was a visitor here in the 1930s to his Uncle Bob and Aunt Polly, and to his Uncle David Rees and Aunt Theodosia. During stays in 1933 Dylan wrote several poems into his notebooks including My hero bares his nerves. Dylan brought his family here during the summers of 1944 and 1945 to stay with his parents who had moved here from Bishopston after inheriting one of the cottages in 1941.

I am staying, as you see, in a country cottage, eight miles from a town and a hundred miles from anyone to whom I can speak to on any subjects but the prospect of rain and the quickest way to snare rabbits. It is raining as I write, a thin, purposeless rain hiding the long miles of desolate fields and scattered farmhouses. I can smell the river, and hear the beastly little brook that goes gurgle-gurgle past this room. I am facing an uncomfortable fire, a row of china dogs, and a bureau bearing the photograph of myself aged seven – thick-lipped, Fauntleroy-haired, wide-eyed, and empty as the bureau itself. (Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, October 1933)

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Dylan’s great-uncle, David Jones, won many medals for rescuing sailors wrecked on the treacherous sands of the estuary. There were also several other relatives in the village, including a cousin who ran the newspaper shop on the square. Dylan came here to drink in the White Lion, sometimes coming across from Laugharne in a boat. It’s been suggested that Ferryside, which sits across the estuary from Llansteffan, was another village that fed into Dylan’s ideas about Llareggub. For more on Dylan and Ferryside, see His Ferryside aunts and uncles at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/home

“We told our visitors that sailors were shipwrecked along the ill-fated Cefn Sands…My father would always give them his version of the wreck. He was eleven in October 1925 when the Paul of Hamburg foundered between Llanstephan and Ferryside, and its crew and canary were carried ashore…He could see the remains of the four-masted white schooner wedged in the sand from the train on his way to Ferryside and Johnstown with his father.” Aeronwy Thomas

Image © coflein.gov.uk

Dylan’s paternal grandparents, Evan and Anne Thomas, came from the upper Tywi valley, Evan from the Brechfa area and Anne from the nearby village of Llangadog. We don’t know for sure whether Dylan visited Llangadog, but he had certainly been to nearby Carreg Cennen castle, mentioned in the Rev. Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer.

We went to Carreg Cennen castle. And he named the Loughor and the Cennen, and all the rivers, and we seen the castle from a little pub called the Cennen Arms, and had bread and cheese and pickles, and he enjoyed it. You know, he enjoyed it.