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Cwmdonkin Park

Dylan Thomas was born on the 27th of October 1914 in Swansea, South Wales, and lived out his childhood at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, in the Uplands area of Swansea. Young Dylan played in nearby Cwmdonkin Park, preferring the jungly regions to the respectable areas of rose garden and tennis court. He sailed his model boats on the fountain. By the fountain was a rockery, "the loud zoo of the willow graves." The boys played here "as innocent as strawberries." Dylan was to write in later years that rather than leaving the childhood world of Cwmdonkin Park, it simply grew with him. The park was an imaginative world without borders, and without an ending:

"And that park grew up with me... In that small iron railed universe of rockery, gravel path, playbank, bowling green, bandstand, reservoir, chrysanthemum garden." (Reminiscences Of Childhood) The park has changed a little since those days. The bandstand and the reservoir have gone, but these changes are a true reflection of "a country just born and always changing." The small borders of the park set Dylan's imagination free, and as he wrote in Should Lanterns Shine, "the ball I threw in that park has still not reached the ground." So often Dylan Thomas finds wide open spaces in small, local things. This sense of a local universe began in a small park which offered limitless freedom to a young boy's imagination.

A memorial stone, and a triangular shelter have been erected to commemorate the poet.

Walk to the top of the park, turn right through the gate, walk a few hundred yards along Penlan Crescent, and you will come to Cwmdonkin Drive where Dylan Thomas was born at Number 5. This ordinary suburban street, with its wonderful wide open view of Mumbles Head, and the distant north Devon coast, once again shows the space in the local details of the world of Dylan Thomas.

Directions: Cwmdonkin Park is in the Uplands area of Swansea. From the centre of Swansea follow Walter Road, which becomes Uplands Crescent, and then Glanmor Road. Turn right into Penlan Crescent. The entrance to the park will be on your right. Click here for an interactive map centred on Cwmdonkin Park.