Nothing could seem more peaceful than the Manor House’s setting in South Leigh, a quiet village eight miles west of Oxford. But 70 years ago, the atmosphere inside this delightful house built of Cotswold stone is likely to have been anything but tranquil.
For in the late 1940s this was the home of the troubled yet brilliant poet Dylan Thomas, and it was here that he wrote much of his masterpiece Under Milk Wood, a radio drama that was later turned into a film starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O’Toole.
The current owners of the Manor House, Amelia and Graham McNeillie, are moving to Newmarket in Suffolk to be near their grandchildren and are now selling the property for £1.8 million after 27 happy years.
This was the home of the troubled yet brilliant poet Dylan Thomas, and it was here that he wrote much of his masterpiece Under Milk Wood
It was long held that Thomas, who battled alcoholism for much of his short life, wrote the play at the Boathouse in Laugharne, Camarthenshire, where he moved after living in Oxfordshire. But in a letter to his parents written in July 1947, Thomas says: ‘I want very much to write a full-length broadcast play; and hope to do it in South Leigh this autumn.’
Peter O’Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton in Under Milk Wood
Recent research suggests most of the first half of the play was indeed penned at the Manor House. But it wasn’t until he was locked in a room in New York did he produce the final version just half an hour before its premiere in 1953.
Thomas moved to Laugharne in 1949 before travelling to the United States, where he would die in 1953, aged only 39.
The Grade II listed Manor House, which dates back to 1650, is beautifully presented.
The drawing room and the beamed dining room both have Georgian bay windows and open fireplaces.
The McNeillie’s restoration work began with the essentials – heating, electrics and plumbing – and then moved on to installing new bathrooms, a new kitchen with a large Aga, and creating a utility extension. They also added a conservatory/dining room. The dining room, kitchen and orangery have flagstone flooring. Upstairs are four bedrooms and three bathrooms, and a two-bedroom guest cottage at the side of garages provides further accommodation.
The drawing room and the beamed dining room both have Georgian bay windows and open fireplaces. The dining room, kitchen, above, and orangery have flagstone flooring
There are three acres of outside space, split equally between garden and paddock. Just outside the back door to the kitchen is a bothy which contains what looks like a brick oven.
But, as Amelia points out as she shows a counter and bowl on its top, Thomas’s wife Caitlin ‘would light a fire to boil water in the bowl – that is how she did the washing’.
‘We’ve renovated the whole house but this is something we couldn’t possibly alter,’ says Amelia. ‘It’s a piece of history.’
Amelia remembers a former neighbour, Rob Brown, talking about Thomas. ‘Rob, who died six years ago, was a tenant farmer,’ Amelia says. ‘In the 1940s he used to take the milk in his cart early in the morning down to the station. On his way back, he’d often find Dylan passed out in a ditch after a night at the pub down the road. He’d load him on to the cart and bring him home.’
The pub in question is the Mason Arms. ‘Some of the old regulars remembered Dylan playing Shove Ha’Penny with them there, and Caitlin dancing on the tables,’ says Amelia.
The house was bought for the Thomases by historian AJP Taylor’s wife Margaret. Dylan and Caitlin had arrived, homeless, at Taylor’s doorstep in Oxford in autumn 1946, and Margaret temporarily let them live in their summerhouse.
Margaret took a shine to Thomas and persuaded Taylor to buy the Manor House for the couple, which he did, for £2,000, on condition that Margaret stopped giving them money (she didn’t) and that they would pay rent (they didn’t).