Cyril Gwynn
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Cyril Gwynn

Cyril Gwynn (1897–1988) was a British poet, from Gower, in the City and County of Swansea. He was known as the Bard of Gower, and became a household name in Gower before leaving for Australia. His poetry was spoken rather than written, and was in the English language, using the Gower dialect.

Arthur Cyril Gwynn, known as Cyril Gwynn, was born on 19 January 1897 in Briton Ferry, Carmarthenshire. His father was a Gower farmer called Arthur Gwynn, and his mother, Caroline, came from Briton Ferry, where her father worked as a ship's pilot. Cyril grew up in Gower on his grandfather's farm in Newton, and at a farm tenanted by his parents at Langland; he also spent time on his aunt's farm at Southgate. He went to school in Newton and Mumbles and it was at school that he began to make up rhymes. His first work dealt with the football team and the Oystermouth fishermen.

In 1906, when their Langland farm was sold to be developed for the Langland golf course, the Gwynn family took over a butcher's shop in Southend, and Cyril helped with deliveries; the shop failed and his parents lost everything.

The Gwynn family then moved to Llanrhidian and Newton, as farm workers, and then to Morriston, Swansea, where the older boys found jobs in government factories.

During the First World War, Cyril served on mine-sweepers.

In 1922 he joined the United States mercantile marine and was shipwrecked off the coast of Africa. He then worked on an oil tanker along the east coast of America, travelling as far south as Mexico. He married Winifred May Tucker of Parkmill in 1922, and they had seven children.

He attended a politics course at Ashridge College, Hertfordshire, and there he met Randolph Churchill and Lennox-Boyd, the unsuccessful Conservative Party candidate for Gower. He became Lennox-Boyd's political agent and considered a political career, but soon abandoned the idea. He was then offered a job at the Western Mail newspaper, but turned this down.

After moving nine times, he bought the 52 acres (210,000 m2) Hills Farm, in Port Eynon in 1946. He had fulfilled his dream: owning his own farm.

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