Saturday, October 17, 2026
The pub with no name and the Swansea poet
These subterranean levels—known today as The Vault—were built in the 1600s as wine and spirits cellars. They feature parallel brick-arched rooms separated by old cast-iron columns, alongside an antique gantry crane on rails once used to hoist heavy casks of liquor.
The cellars were famously immortalized as the "Wine Vaults" in poet Dylan Thomas's short story "The Followers", during an era when the bar was a bohemian gathering spot. Today, the historic cellars operate as a large capacity space hosting live music on weekends, events, and private functions.
It was a legal requirement for each public house selling alcohol to have a recogniseable sign. However as the building was a bar and not a public house, a sign had not been allocated. This was soon rectified and the premises was officially presented with the title of “No Sign”. As for the building itself, it is listed as Grade II and was “the first site of Swansea’s Chamber of Commerce and one of the first recorded libraries in Swansea.” It has been licensed throughout its recorded history being in turn brew house, brewery, wine and spirits merchants and Public House.
The 1930s was a golden era for the City of Swansea and with musicians, writers and artists among its regular patronage, the No Sign became a significant creative bohemian hotspot. Most notably of these was the Welsh poet and beloved scoundrel Dylan Thomas. He and his creative contemporaries became known as “the Kardomah gang” and would be frequently found reveling in the image of the drunken artist. As a result the No Sign is one of the significant venues included in the cultured literary pub crawl by the Dylan Thomas Experience.
“I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet-brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners.” ―Dylan Thomas
Labels: lochist
