Dylan Thomas

Statute of Dylan Thomas

Cwmdonkin Park was very important to Dylan Thomas when he was growing up in Uplands and he often refers to it in his writings about his childhood.

“A world within the world of the sea town… full of terrors and treasures…a country just born and always changing….and that park grew up with me….In that small, iron-railed universe of rockery, gravel-path, playbank, bowling-green, bandstand reservoir, chrysanthemum garden, …..in the grass one must keep off, I endured, with pleasure, the first agonies of unrequited love, the first slow boiling in the belly of a bad poem, the strutting and raven-locked self-dramatization of what, at that time seemed incurable adolescence.”

Although some of the Park’s features have gone, notably the reservoir and bandstand, and although ‘Old Smalley’, the bearded park-keeper who Dylan terrorised is long dead, much of what inspired him still remains, and the whole place is celebrated in poems like ‘Once it was the colour of saying’, and of course in ‘The Hunchback in the Park’.

Dylan’s deeply nostalgic radio piece ‘Return Journey’ comes to its dramatic climax in the park, and his radio piece ‘Reminiscences of Childhood’ the significance of this park is stated emphatically.

On entering the Park, you can turn left or right either way will bring you round to a triangular shelter, erected as a memorial to Dylan. Carry on up the path, you will see a statute of Dylan Thomas and near the pavilion (Dylan’s café) is the cast-iron drinking fountain, sadly no longer with a tin drinking cup.

“Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
The Hunchback in the Park”

Turn down the path to the left you will seen an engraved memorial stone to the poet which was erected in 1963.

If you leave the Park by the top gate, you will come to Cwmdonkin Drive, Dylan’s birthplace now a museum.

For more on Dylan Thomas visit the Dylan Thomas Centre.