Talk:Dylan Thomas Boathouse

Writing shed

Can someone justify or elaborate on the claim (in both the text and the image caption) that the writing shed is a "reconstruction"? (I see the Lonely Planet guide, cited, also calls it a "replica"; everyone else seems to imply, without explicitly stating, that it's the real thing.) When was it reconstructed? When I visited (several times) in the 1980s, I got the impression that the building was the original, although the interior had clearly been dressed up to make it look as if Dylan had just stepped out. Has it been completely replaced, or is this a "Ship of Theseus" case of piecemeal repairs and restoration over many years, so that there's now nothing left of the original? I suspect readers would be interested to know. GrindtXX (talk) 14:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi GrindtXX. It looks like Lonely Planet uses the word "replica", while Discovering Carmarthenshire just says "clifftop"? I have never visited, so I can't offer any personal opinion. But it does look in remarkably good nick for a shed that's maybe about 100 years old? Here's a photo of it in 1999 when it was light blue. It seems its position is quite precarious as can be seen here and here. And it seems to have been refurbished, just last year, here. My own guess is that the main wooden structure may be (mostly) original) but that the interior has been reconstructed/ redesigned as a replica with similar furniture and artefacts. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:24, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

p.s. This source says the following:

"Just above the Boat House along Dylan’s Walk (as Cliff Road is now known) was a wooden garage. It had been put up in the 1920s to house Laugharne’s first motor car — a Wolseley belonging to a summer resident of the Boat House. In 1949, with the installation of windows, a stove and a few bits of furniture, the garage was converted into Dylan Thomas’s writing shed.

It’s still there, teetering on the cliff edge, Thomas’s ‘word-splashed room’. It’s been preserved as a sort of shrine. Caitlin sold its original furniture to help pay debts after her husband’s death. So when you peer through the window, what you see is a staged recreation of his workroom, complete with fag ends, empty beer bottles and crumpled ‘manuscript pages’. There’s even a handful of the boiled sweets he liked on his desk. And lists of alliterative words lie by his pencil pot.

The furnishings are sparse: a stove, a couple of old kitchen chairs, a plain table and a bookcase. Dingy, brown curtains hang at the double-casement window, framing the view of the estuary. On the white-painted walls are curling photographs of poets — among them Byron, W. H. Auden and the other Welsh Thomas poet: Edward."

Outside, next to the painted blue doors (not the originals, which are in the Dylan Thomas Centre) is a board. ‘In this building Dylan Thomas wrote many of his famous works seeking inspiration from the panoramic view of the estuary’, it reads. ‘Many’, might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Certainly, Dylan Thomas wrote some poems here. And it was where he finally finished Under Milk Wood, the ‘play for voices’ he’d worked on — on and off — for years."

Regards. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:27, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi Martinevans123. Thanks for looking into this. The 1999 photo shows very much what I remember from the late 1980s. Having looked though your various additional sources (and pending any firm evidence to the contrary), I tend to agree with you: the shed itself appears to be the original, albeit with much restoration and repair over the years (including the replacement of the doors); while the interior is a reconstruction ("staged recreation" above is good). The interior must be what the Lonely Planet was thinking of in using the word "replica", even though "a replica of the old shed" is ambiguous. But in that case I do think our wording needs some adjustment. As our image only shows the exterior, this can simply be called the writing shed, without the misleading word "reconstruction"; while the text description can be tweaked to emphasise that it's the interior that is a reconstruction/replica/recreation. I'm going to be bold and make those changes (and add your Charlotte Peacock source, which looks well informed, even though self-published). Feel free to revert or tweak further. GrindtXX (talk) 17:48, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Go ahead. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:51, 25 June 2021 (UTC) p.s. shouldn't this article have a possessive apostrophe i.e. Thomas' or Thomas's?

The official name does appear to be "the Dylan Thomas Boathouse" (link at foot of page). I'll leave that for someone else to worry about! GrindtXX (talk) 18:00, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

You can't trust these Welsh folk with English punctuation, you know! Martinevans123 (talk) 18:08, 25 June 2021 (UTC)