New Quay

Until the early 19th century, New Quay consisted of a few thatched cottages surrounded by agricultural land, the natural harbour providing a safe mooring for fishing boats and a few small trading vessels. The New Quay Harbour Act was passed in 1834 and a stone pier was constructed at a cost of £4,700. Trading activity increased and new houses were built as economic migrants arrived. As shipbuilding started up, the town increased in size with the construction of terraced housing up the slopes of the sheltered bay.^[3]

By the 1840s, more than three hundred men were employed in building ships in three centres: New Quay itself; Traethgwyn, a bay just to the north; and Cei-bach, a pebble beach further north below a wooded cliff. Here were constructed not only smacks and schooners for sailing along the coast, but also larger vessels for sailing to the Americas and Australia. At that time, as well as shipwrights, New Quay had half a dozen blacksmith shops, three sail makers, three ropeworks and a foundry. Most of the men of the town were mariners or employed in occupations linked with the sea.^[4] Several of the old warehouses remain, having been put to new uses. Lengths of chain, metal rings and capstans, and a list of tolls for exports and imports can still be seen outside the harbourmaster's office.^[4]

By 1870, shipbuilding had ceased at New Quay but most of the men living there still went to sea. There were navigation schools in the town and many of the last square riggers that sailed the world were captained by New Quay men. Between 1850 and 1927, the Board of Trade issued 1,380 Merchant Master and Mate certificates to New Quay men compared, for example, with 21 certificates to Laugharne men and five to Ferryside men.^[5]

In 1907, a local newspaper noted that “New Quay... has more retired sea captains living in it than any other place of its own size in Wales.”^[6] At the 1939 War Register, there were 58 sailors living in New Quay (of whom 30 were master mariners), compared with four living in Laugharne and one in Ferryside.^[7]

The New Quay historian, S.C. Passmore, has noted the “zeal for learning” that was present in New Quay. This was reflected in the opening of a Newspaper Reading Room in 1854, later incorporating a Lloyds Lending Library.^[8]

One of the first guides for tourists was published in 1885 by the Welsh Press: Guide to New Quay: Being a short description of New Quay as a Watering-place.^[9]

The 1904-1905 Welsh revival began in New Quay.^[10]

Coronation Gardens, at the bottom of the town next to the pier, were created in 1911 to mark the coronation of George V.

A Memorial Hall was built on Towyn Road in 1925 in memory of those killed in the First World War.^[11]

Pupils from the London Nautical School were evacuated to New Quay during the 1939-1945 War, and billeted around the town in residents’ homes and hotels.^[12] There is an extended online description, with photos, of the School’s time in New Quay in the School magazine.^[13]

There were 877 residents in New Quay shown on the Register of Electors in May 1945. Of these, 587 were women and 290 were men, figures that partly reflect the number of New Quay men, most of them sailors, who were killed in the First and Second World Wars.^[14]

The post-war history of New Quay is largely that of the emergence of the town as an attractive holiday destination.

New Quay is the name of the electoral ward which is coterminous with the community. Since 1995 the ward has elected one county councillor to Ceredigion County Council.

At the local level, New Quay Town Council is composed of ten councillors.^[15]

Key attractions for holidaymakers include the picturesque harbour and expansive sandy beaches, as well as opportunities such as boat trips to see the population of bottlenose dolphins that lives in Cardigan Bay. The town has a heritage centre and marine wildlife centre. Nearby New Quay Honey Farm, the largest bee farm in Wales,^[16] has a live bee exhibition and sells honey, mead and beeswax. The outskirts of the town feature many large holiday parks and caravan sites.

The annual Cardigan Bay Regatta, usually in August, has been conducted since at least the 1870s. Events now include inshore sports (swimming, rowing, etc.) and dinghy and cruiser racing.^[17]

There are extensive beach walks, as well as cliff walks along the Coastal Path, south to Llangrannog and north to Aberaeron.

The National Trust's Llanerchaeron estate is just a short drive away,^[18] as is the 18th century Ty Glyn Walled Garden in Ciliau Aeron. Less than an hour's drive away is the neolithic Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber,^[19] as well as the Castell Henllys Iron Age Village.^[20] Restored steam trains on the Vale of Rheidol Railway^[21] leave from nearby Aberystwyth on the scenic route to Devil’s Bridge.^[22]

As well as shops, restaurants and pubs, New Quay has a large primary school, a doctors' surgery, a small branch of the county library service, a fire station and a Memorial Hall.^[23] There is also a public park at the top of New Quay next to the tennis court. New Quay Bowling Club is on Francis Street, at the top of the town. New Quay Golf Club first appeared in 1909, but closed in the 1920s.^[24] The nearest golf club today is Cardigan Golf Club.

In addition to the hospitality industry, there is still significant employment in sea fishing and fish processing.

New Quay Lifeboat Station, operated by the RNLI, houses two lifeboats: a Mersey class named Frank and Lena Clifford of Stourbridge in dedication to its main benefactors and an inshore inflatable D class.^[25] In 2014 the station celebrated 150 years of service, during which period it made 940 callouts.^[26][27]

Public transport is provided by regular bus services to Aberaeron, Cardigan and Aberystwyth. The town has never had a train service, as schemes to open routes to Cardigan or Newcastle Emlyn were abandoned in the 1860s, and that from the Aberaeron to Lampeter branch line (the Lampeter, Aberayron and New Quay Light Railway) was never completed due to the First World War.

Dylan and Caitlin Thomas lived in New Quay from 4 September 1944 until July 1945,^[28] renting a cliff-top bungalow called Majoda - there's a photograph here:^[29] It stood, said Thomas, “in a really wonderful bit of the bay, with a beach of its own. Terrific.” ^[30] Made of wood and asbestos, Majoda's facilities were basic: it had no mains electricity, gas or water, and the lavatory and a water tap were both outside.^[31] It was, wrote Caitlin, "cheaply primitive,"^[32] and they were there during one of the coldest Cardiganshire winters on record. ^[33]

There were several other families from Swansea living in New Quay, who had come after the bombing of Swansea in February 1941,^[34] including the historian and artist, Myra Evans (1883-1972).^[35] Thomas' Swansea friend and distant cousin, Vera Killick,^[36] lived next to Majoda in Ffynnonfeddyg cottage, whilst her sister, Evelyn Milton, lived further along the cliff-top.^[37] Thomas also had a Swansea aunt, and four cousins, in New Quay, who had lived there since the 1920s,^[38] as well as a more distant relative, the First World War fighter pilot ace, James Ira Thomas Jones, aka Ira Taffy Jones.^[39]

Thomas had previously visited New Quay in the 1930s^[40] and then again in 1942–43 when he and Caitlin had lived a few miles away at Plas Gelli, Talsarn.^[41] His New Quay pub poem Sooner than you can water milk dates from this period,^[42] as does his script for the filming of Cardigan Bay for the final part of Wales - Green Mountain, Black Mountain.^[43]

One of Thomas's patrons was Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, whose summer residence was Plas Llanina, an historic manor house perched on the cliffs at Cei Bach, just a short walk away from Majoda. He encouraged Thomas to use the old apple house at the bottom of the manor's walled garden as a quiet place in which to write.^[44] It would have been an inspirational setting, and one Dylan Thomas scholar has suggested that the stories about Llanina's drowned houses and cemetery are "the literal truth that inspired the imaginative and poetic truth" of Under Milk Wood.^[45] Another important aspect of that literal truth was the 60 acres of cliff-top between Majoda and New Quay that fell into the sea in the early 1940s.^[46]

New Quay, said Caitlin, was exactly Thomas's kind of place, "with the ocean in front of him...and a pub where he felt at home in the evenings” ^[47] and he was happy there, as his letters reveal.^[48] His ten months at Majoda were the most fertile period of his adult life, a second flowering said his first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon, "with a great outpouring of poems."^[49] These Majoda poems, including making a start on Fern Hill, provided nearly half the poems of Deaths and Entrances, published in 1946.^[50] There were four film scripts as well,^[51] and a radio script, Quite Early One Morning, about a walk around New Quay. This radio script has been described by Professor Walford Davies as "a veritable storehouse of phrases, rhythms and details later resurrected or modified for Under Milk Wood."^[52] Not since his late teenage years had Thomas written so much. His second biographer, Paul Ferris, concluded that "on the grounds of output, the bungalow deserves a plaque of its own."^[53] Thomas’s third biographer, George Tremlett, concurred, describing the time in New Quay as “one of the most creative periods of Thomas’s life.”^[54]

New Quay is often cited as an inspiration for the village of Llareggub in Under Milk Wood.^[55][56] Walford Davies, for example, has concluded that New Quay "was crucial in supplementing the gallery of characters Thomas had to hand for writing Under Milk Wood."^[57]FitzGibbon had come to a similar conclusion, noting that "Llareggub resembles New Quay more closely [than Laugharne] and many of the characters derive from that seaside village in Cardiganshire..."^[58] Writing in January 1954, just days before the first BBC broadcast of the play, its producer, Douglas Cleverdon, noted that Thomas "wrote the first half within a few months; then his inspiration seemed to fail him when he left New Quay..."^[59] And one of Thomas's closest friends, Ivy Williams of Brown's Hotel, Laugharne, has said "Of course, it wasn't really written in Laugharne at all. It was written in New Quay, most of it."^[60] Jack Patrick Evans, landlord of the Black Lion in New Quay, has provided an account of Thomas gathering material for the play in the pub: “...he seemed to do his best writing among us local people – he was always with a pad on his knees...Always busy, making notes of any local characters who came in." ^[61]

Thomas's sketch of Llareggub is now online at the National Library of Wales.^[62] The Dylan Thomas scholar, James Davies, has written that "Thomas's drawing of Llareggub is...based on New Quay."^[63] There's been very little disagreement, if any, with this view. A recent analysis^[64] of the sketch has revealed that Thomas used the name of an actual New Quay resident, Cherry Jones, for one of the people living in Cockle Street.^[65] There’s more on New Quay's Cherry Jones and Llareggub’s Cherry Owen online here:^[66]

Thomas also drew upon other New Quay residents, including Mrs Ogmore Davies and Mrs Pritchard-Jones, both of Church Street, whose names when combined produce Llareggub’s Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.^[67]

Jack Lloyd Evans, a New Quay postman and the Town Crier,^[68] also lived on Church Street.^[69] He provided the character of Llareggub's postman, Willy Nilly, whose practice of opening letters, and spreading the news, reflects Lloyd's role as Town Crier, as Thomas himself noted: "Nobody minds him opening the letters and acting as [a] kind of town-crier. How else could they know the news?" ^[70] This work sheet note, together with our knowledge that Thomas knew Jack Lloyd ("an old friend"),^[71] make the link between Lloyd and Llareggub’s Willy Nilly.

There were also other New Quay people in the play, including Dai Fred Davies, the donkeyman on board the fishing vessel, the Alpha. He appears in the play as Tom-Fred the donkeyman. ^[72]

There are, too, New Quay people who can be found in the play, but not by name. Fourth Drowned’s question “Buttermilk and whippets?” is a good example: Jack Patrick, landlord of the Black Lion, kept whippets and made buttermilk in his dairy next to the hotel. ^[73] There’s a photo of Jack with one of his whippets here: ^[74]

At the beginning of the play, Third Drowned asks: “How’s the tenors in Dowlais?” The question reflects the close relationship that once existed between New Quay and Dowlais, an industrial town in the South Wales valleys. Its workers traditionally came to New Quay for their holidays, and often sang on the pier on summer evenings. Such was the relationship between the two towns that when St Mair’s church in Dowlais was demolished in 1963, its bell was given to New Quay's parish church.^[75]

Other names and features from New Quay in the play include Maesgwyn farm, ^[76] the Sailor's Home Arms,^[77] the river Dewi,^[78] the quarry,^[79] the harbour,^[80] Manchester House,^[81] the hill of windows^[82] and the Downs.^{[83] [84]}

Llareggub's occupational profile as a town of seafarers, fishermen, cocklers and farmers has been examined through an analysis of the 1939 War Register, comparing the returns for New Quay with those for Laugharne, Ferryside and Llansteffan. It shows that New Quay and Ferryside provide by far the best fit with Llareggub's occupational profile.^[85]

The writer and puppeteer, Walter Wilkinson, visited New Quay in 1947; his essay on the town captures its character and atmosphere as Thomas would have found it two years earlier.^[86] There is, too, an online 1959 ITV film of the town and its people during the summer holiday season.^[87]

Much of the location filming for The Edge of Love, a 2008 film based around Thomas and Caitlin's friendship with Vera Killick, was carried out in and around New Quay. It starred Sienna Miller, Keira Knightley, Matthew Rhys and Cillian Murphy. The film, said the scriptwriter, Sharman Macdonald, was a work of fiction: it was "not true, it's surmise on my part, it's a fiction… I made it up."^[88] One incident in the film that Macdonald did not make up was the shooting at Majoda in March 1945, after which Vera's husband, William Killick, was charged with attempted murder and later acquitted.^[89]

The Dylan Thomas Trail runs through Ceredigion, in west Wales, with a published walking guide available.^[90] It was officially opened by Dylan and Caitlin's daughter, Aeronwy Thomas, in July 2003. The trail is marked by blue plaques, with information boards in New Quay, Lampeter and Aberaeron. Two photographic online guides to the New Quay section of the Trail are available.^[91][92] There are also a number of accessible day walks, including the Rev. Eli Jenkins' Pub Walk,^[93] which follows the river Dewi to the sea, passing close to the farm of the Cilie poets.^[94]

Thomas and his family left New Quay in July 1945. By September, he was writing to Caitlin about finding somewhere to live, telling her he would live in Majoda again.^[95] He came back to New Quay at least twice in 1946, the first time in March, a visit he records in his radio broadcast, The Crumbs of One Man’s Year, in which he writes about the “gently swilling retired sea-captains” in the back bar of the Black Lion. Then, in early summer, he was seen in the Commercial pub (formerly the Sailor's Home Arms^[96] and now called The Seahorse Inn) with jazz pianist, Dill Jones, whose paternal family came from New Quay.^[97] Thomas's letter in August 1946 to his patron, Margaret Taylor, provides a vivid roll-call of some of the New Quay characters that he knew.^[98]

Thomas also refers to New Quay in his 1949 broadcast, Living in Wales (“hoofed with seaweed, did a jig on the Llanina sands...”).^[99] He was still in touch in 1953 with at least one New Quay friend, Skipper Rymer, who had briefly run the Dolau pub in New Quay.^[100]

• Towyn Jones (1858–1925), clergyman, politician and MP for Carmarthenshire East and later Llanelli.
• John Tywi Jones (1870-1948), Baptist minister, journalist and playwright. Wikipedia in Welsh.
• Elizabeth Mary Jones (‘Moelona’, 1877–1953), teacher, novelist and translator, including the works of Alphonse Daudet.
• Florrie Evans, (1884–1967) a local resident and daughter of a New Quay seaman, is reported to have started the 1904 Welsh Christian revival in New Quay. She went on to be a preacher and a missionary to India.^[101]
• Geraint Bowen, (1915–2011), Welsh language poet, academic and political campaigner.
• Dill Jones, (1923–1984), a jazz stride pianist.
• Angharad Taris (b.1964), artist.
• Samantha Wynne Rhydderch (b.1966), poet. Wikipedia in Welsh.
• Francesca Rhydderch (b.1969), writer and academic.
• Ryan Andrews (b. 1981), film director, music video director and production designer.

Plas Llanina is a mile or so to the north of New Quay on the cliffs above Traethgwyn and Cei Bach beaches. It is considered a good example of a small-scale, post-medieval gentry house.^[102] It has a chequered history, including some interesting owners and various stories associated with them. It belonged to the Musgrave family from around 1630. By the end of the 18th century it had passed into the ownership of the Jones family, the last of whom was Edward Warren Jones. When he died, he left the Llanina Estate to his two godchildren, Mrs Charlotte Lloyd (of Coedmore) and her younger brother, Charles Richard Longcroft.^[103] The house remained with the Longcrofts until about 1920, its last owner being Air Vice Marshal Sir Charles Alexander Holcombe Longcroft (1883–1958) who had been born and brought up at Llanina. He is considered a founding father of the Royal Air Force.^[104]

Sometime in the late 1930s, the house and grounds were rented by Lord Howard de Walden as a summer residence.^[105] In the late 1940s, it was bought by Colonel J. J. Davis and Betty Davis, who later moved to Ty Glyn in Ciliau Aeron.^[106] By 1964, Plas Llanina was derelict.^[107] It was subsequently bought in 1988 and rebuilt by a London banker.^[108]

The house sits next to the church of Saint Ina, with a public footpath to both the church and the beach.

• R. Atrill (n.d.) A Brief History of New Quay in Photos [1]
• R. Atrill (n.d.) Then and Now: How New Quay Has Changed. [2]
• R. Atrill (n.d) The Dylan Thomas Trail in New Quay [3]
• R. Bryan (2012) New Quay: A History in Pictures, Llanina Books.
• The Francis Frith collection of New Quay photographs, with over 150 items, most from the 1930-1960 period. [4]
• D. N. Thomas (n.d.) Photographs of New Quay with a Dylan Thomas interest.[5]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to New Quay.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for New Quay.

• Andrew Dally: An Early Morning Walk Around New Quay, 2016: On the trail of Dylan Thomas in New Quay
• D. N. Thomas: A Postcard from New Quay and other essays on Dylan Thomas, New Quay and Under Milk Wood: A Postcard from New Quay
• D. N Thomas: New Quay, Llareggub and the 1939 War Register: Llareggub and the 1939 War Register
• D. N. Thomas: Dylan, Vera and The Edge of Love film: The Edge of Love: the Real Story
• Dylan Thomas: A Sketch of Llareggub, National Library of Wales: Dylan's Sketch of Llareggub with an analysis by D. N. Thomas at Dylan Thomas: A Postcard from New Quay - Dylan's Sketch of Llareggub

• R. Bryan (2012) New Quay: A History in Pictures, Llanina Books.
• R. Bryan (2014) The New Quay Lifeboats: 150 Years of Service and Courage, Llanina Books
• S. Campbell-Jones (S. C. Passmore) (1974/75) Shipbuilding at New Quay 1779-1878 in Ceredigion, 7, 3/4.
• J .A. Davies (2000) Dylan Thomas's Swansea, Gower and Laugharne, University of Wales Press.
• W. Davies and R. Maud, eds.(1995) Under Milk Wood: the Definitive Edition, Everyman.
• C. Edwards-Jones (2013) New Quay Wales Remembered, Book Guild Publishing.
• P. Ferris (ed.) (2000) The Collected Letters: Dylan Thomas, Dent.
• J. G. Jenkins (1982) Maritime Heritage:The Ships and Seamen of Southern Ceredigion, Gomer
• W. J. Lewis (1987) New Quay and Llanarth, Aberystwyth.
• S. C. Passmore (1986) New Quay at the time of the 1851 Census, Ceredigion, 3, 5.
• S. C. Passmore (2012) Farmers and Figureheads: the Port of New Quay and its Hinterland, Grosvenor.
• S. C. Passmore (2015) The Streets of New Quay, Lulu Press
• S. W. Rhydderch (2015) Ceredigion Coast: Llareggub and the Black Lion in A Dylan Odessey: 15 Literary Tour Maps, ed. S. Edmonds, Literature Wales/Graffeg.
• D. N. Thomas (2000) Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, Seren.
• D. N. Thomas (2002) Dylan Thomas' New Quay in the New Welsh Review, Summer.
• D. N. Thomas (2002) The Dylan Thomas Trail, Y Lolfa.
• D. N. Thomas (2004) The Birth of Under Milk Wood in Dylan Remembered vol. 2 1935–1953, Seren.
• D. N. Thomas (2014) A Postcard from New Quay in Ellis, H. (ed.) (2014) Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Celebration, Bloomsbury
• M. de Walden (1965) Pages from My Life, Sidgewick and Jackson.
• W. Wilkinson (1948) Puppets in Wales, Bles.