Dylan Thomas Birthplace scoops major heritage award.

The Dylan Thomas Birthplace has beaten of the challenge of iconic castles and stately homes to win the Special Judges Award for Best Place to Stay in the prestigious Hudson’s Heritage Awards which were made at an award ceremony at Goldsmith’s Hall in the City of London this week (14th March).

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Geoff Haden who restored the Thomas family home and collected the award from Penelope, Viscountess Cobham, the chair of VisitEngland said “This is a huge honour and a testament to the hard work of our staff and volunteers in making this a unique place to visit and stay.

The house is as it might have been when Dylan lived and work there for 23 years and produced two thirds of his published work so no television or radio but a rare opportunity to escape the 21st century play games, read and relax.”

“In fourteen award categories we were the only Welsh based business shortlisted so it was a great honour to pull off this major award against quality opposition.”

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Lady Cobham & Birthplace restorer Geoff Haden with the award.

The annual awards were established in 2011 and are an independently judged national scheme open to historic houses, gardens, museums and heritage sites and celebrate the very best visitor experiences.

The awards lunch was hosted by an independent judging panel of heritage experts including Chairman Norman Hudson OBE, heritage consultant; Lucinda Lambton, writer and broadcaster; Jeremy Musson, architectural writer; Simon Foster, consultant to Channel 4’s Country House Rescue and Ken Robinson, CBE, tourism business consultant.

Sarah Greenwood, director at Hudson’s and publisher of Hudson’s Historic Houses & Gardens said “The finalists in 2017 showcase an amazing range of experiences just waiting for us all to enjoy at Britain’s heritage places. This year they include three World Heritage Sites but also iconic castles, public buildings, unusual gardens and stunning country houses several of which are not well known. We at Hudson’s would like to congratulate them all on setting the standards for others to follow”.

 

Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

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Published in: on 15 March, 2017 at 2:16 pm  Comments (2)  
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Dylan Thomas Birthplace carries Welsh hopes at top heritage awards.

The Birthplace of Dylan Thomas in Uplands, Swansea is the only Welsh heritage attraction shortlisted for a prestigious Hudson’s Heritage Award with the outcome being announced at a presentation lunch on Tuesday 14th March in Goldsmith’s Hall in London.

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The house which has been restored to its condition as a new house when bought by the Thomas family in 1914 is not only up for an award for the Best Accommodation but also for the Best New Discovery Award.

Geoff Haden, the chair of the Dylan Thomas Society, restored the house and now runs it as a tourist attraction and a unique place to stay overnight and soak up the atmosphere of a place where Dylan lived for 23 years says “This recognition is a tribute to our volunteers and staff who have turned this iconic building into a ‘must visit’ destination for groups and individuals and put this important family home on the literary and cultural map.”

The independent Hudson’s Awards were started in 2011 by publisher Norman Hudson to celebrate the high quality experience enjoyed by visitors to a range of heritage attractions and this year there are ten categories.

In the Best Accommodation category the Birthplace is up against Shropshire duo Western Park and Combermere Abbey as well as Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland while vying for the Best New Discovery with the Birthplace are Blenheim Palace, Eltham Palace and the RHS Lindley Library.

Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 10 March, 2017 at 12:16 pm  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…23rd January 1932

The Herald of Wales ran an article entitled Tragedy of Swansea’s Comic Genius by its junior reporter Dylan Thomas. Dylan looked at the life of Llewelyn Prichard, poet, artist and actor. Prichard was perhaps best known for creating many tales around the Welsh ‘Robin Hood’ figure from Welsh folklore, ‘Twm Shon Catti’

Dylan’s opening lines were eerily self prophetic…

“No one can deny that the most attractive figures in literature are always those around whom a world of lies and legend has been woven, those half mythical artists whose real characters become cloaked forever under a veil of the bizarre.”

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 23 January, 2017 at 6:41 pm  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…12th January 1935

An in depth review of Dylan’s 18 Poems appeared in the Herald of Wales newpaper. Reviewer, A. Spencer Vaughan-Thomas B.A. (Oxon) wrote…

‘No one can read his work without feeling that here is a poet magnificently equipped to achieve great things.’

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 12 January, 2017 at 4:30 pm  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…12th January 1935

The Onlooker of the Herald of Wales drew attention to its former staff member, Dylan Thomas’ new book 18 Poems. Dylan’s previous articles from 1932 on the poets of Swansea and the responses that were garnered from the late classicist, James Chapman Woods were also mentioned. The ‘Onlooker’ hypothesised how Woods would now view the modern approach of this rising, young, local poet.

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 12 January, 2017 at 10:22 am  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…11th January 1935

A highly complimentary review of Dylan’s first published book Eighteen Poems appeared in The Swansea Review section of the Swansea & West Wales Guardian newspaper.
This seems to be the first instance where the book was reviewed in a Welsh periodical.

The reviewer, “20th CENTURY” says of Dylan…

‘Modern poets fall into two categories, those who are the creatures of their age, and those who are it’s creators. In the latter group we find Auden, Spender and Dylan Thomas. It is a fault of both Auden and Spender, that having perfected their technique as poets, they strain themselves to become perfect media for propaganda. Dylan Thomas is too much the artist to allow politics to bemuse his muse. One knows instinctively his politics are correct, but they hover like a faint perfume above the lines of his poetry; they neither intrude or obtrude.’

He closes with…

‘Mr. Thomas is doing with poetry much the same as James Joyce did with prose. He is making a new language, not a Joyce did by making numerous languages to produce an illegitimate literary off-spring, but hammering new meaning into old worlds and phrases; crowning backs with the alchemy of his essentially poetic imagination.

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

 

Published in: on 11 January, 2017 at 1:25 pm  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…7th January 1933

Whilst working as a junior reporter Dylan had an interesting article entitled ‘Genius and Madness Akin in World of Art’ published in the South Wales Evening Post.

In his piece he examines the lifestyles and character ‘kinks’ of many prominent figures in history and the present day. At the end of the article he poses the question ‘Who would be a genius after all?’

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 7 January, 2017 at 9:54 am  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…5th January 1935

Dylan’s friend and mentor Bert Trick writes to the editor of South Wales Evening Post hailing the rising young poet whilst attacking the lack of discussion generated since the release of Dylan’s first book 18 Poems by what he calls the ‘intelligentsia of Swansea.’ Trick asks the question, ‘are these cultural circles so moribund that they cannot see a new star in the literary firmament?’

‘Sir,- One can be pardoned for imagining that the paragraphs concerning the poems of Dylan Thomas, which have appeared in your columns, would have evoked a spate of correspondence from the intelligentsia of Swansea.
Are these cultural circles so moribund that they cannot see a new star in the literary firmament? Are they so cloyed with picking-over the cold coalitions of the academic school that they have no appetite for the red-blood and meat of the moderns?
Or is it due to a distrust of local talent, the phenomenon that compels native artists to assume foreign names to win recognition for their talents?
The early reviews of Dylan Thomas’s volume of eighteen poems have been not only commendatory, but, to a degree, eulogistic. He is regarded in the higher literary circles as the outstanding poet of the last decade, and it is true to say, as was quoted in your paragraph, that he has already outstripped the Eliot-Pound-Auden school, having wrought a technique entirely individual, which is at the same time in direct line of descent from Blake, Webster and Beddoes.’

A. E Trick
69, Glanbrydan avenue
Swansea

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Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 5 January, 2017 at 11:22 am  Leave a Comment  
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Did you enjoy a drop this Christmas?

D.J. Thomas (Dylan’s father) enjoyed a glass or two of Hancock’s Mild Ale. It was his favourite tipple and in his day was widely available in Swansea. As you can see from the advert from the South Wales Evening Post, you could even get it delivered to your door for Christmas…

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William Hancock & Co Ltd had a strong presence in Swansea and was Wales’ biggest brewer. The company operated several sites in the town from 1887 until the late 1960s including one near the famous Vetch Field and one at the bottom of now ‘infamous’ Wind Street. The company was acquired by Bass then Brains in 1999 and now Molson Coors.

Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 2 January, 2017 at 10:22 am  Leave a Comment  
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On this date…1st January 1935

Dylan’s first book 18 Poems was mentioned in the ‘Gossip of the Day’ column in the South Wales Evening Post. 

 Mr. Dylan Thomas’s verse is now published and those who want to see what the most modern of poetry is like will be able to satisfy their curiosity in the eighteen poems given in the volume. Mr. Thomas is at the spearhead of the very latest movement. I committed a faux-pas the other day when, mistakingly I referred to him as the T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pounds and Auden school. “Eliot! Pounds! Auden!” the young man said in derision. “They are numbers in the poetical world.” – Poetry moves swiftly these days.


Take a look at our website www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com for details on how you can create your own unique experiences including tours, overnight stays and dining experiences at the home of Dylan Thomas, Wales’ most renowned writer!

Published in: on 1 January, 2017 at 10:31 am  Leave a Comment  
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