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The Kardomah cafe

The Kardomah Café was originally located in Castle Street on the site of the Congregational Chapel, where Dylan's parents, D.J. and Florence, were married in 1903. In the 1930s it became one of the favourite meeting-places of Dylan and his friends.

The name 'Kardomah Gang' has become a useful term to describe the group of talented writers, artists and musicians who were Dylan's contemporaries. In reality, these people didn't think of themselves as part of a unified group, and were probably never all at the café at the same time.

Dylan recalled the Kardomah fondly in the 1949 BBC Broadcast Swansea and the Arts as the place "where Swansea's rich artists and poverty-stricken business men used to meet, on separate floors, to discuss shares and pictures." In Return Journey it is the café where Dylan and friends would discuss how "Dan Jones was going to compose the most prodigious symphony, Fred Janes paint the most miraculously meticulous picture, Charlie Fisher catch the poshest trout, Vernon Watkins and Young Thomas write the most boiling poems, how they would ring the bells of London and paint it like a tart..."

During the war, though, the Kardomah was "razed to the snow" as Dylan puts it in Return Journey. It re-opened in new premises in the centre of town, where it remains a thriving business.