I spotted the Barmouth Sailors’ Institute early one morning two summers ago. In the dim, aqueous light of a wet Welsh morning, I looked through shining windows into a long rectangular room, neat as a pin, with newspapers folded on a table and a mass of framed portrait photographs jostling edge to edge on pale blue tongue-and-groove walls. When I returned the next year, Janet Griffith was painting the windowsills, getting the first coat on between showers. This year, she had run the Welsh Dragon up the flagstaff in time for our arrival.
Janet, who is now the institute’s secretary and an executive-committee member, was frequently at sea, often choosing to sail with her late husband, Dafydd, rather than face long separations of up to six months at a time. ‘I was always hands on,’ she explains. ‘I was painting, caulking the deck and I showed an interest in navigation and was allowed on the bridge.’ Barmouth-born Dafydd was a radar operator and purser, just the sort of seaman for whom the institute – the last of its kind in daily use in Wales – was built. As boys, he and his friends would be sent up onto its roof to clear off the sand that blew there. Afterwards, they were allowed inside. If they were lucky, they were trusted to moor one of the skiffs in the har-bour below. (‘You can go for a spin in the punt afterwards. Leave it fast to the ladder when you’ve finished and remember the tide’s on the ebb,’ the older men would say.) After nine years in the RAF, Dafydd joined the Merchant Navy, making long voyages to load the raw material for the production of aluminium in the Caribbean and sailing it on to Canada, Scandinavia and the Norwegian fords. Sometimes, there were missionaries on outbound voyages all the way down to the British Cameroons (which are now parts of Nigeria and Cameroon). On the return legs, they picked up monkeys and parrots that were destined for zoos.
The institute was built in 1890 by a local philanthropist, Canon Edward Hughes. It was his thoughtful gift to locals – referred to as the people of the quay – to provide a space for socialising and relaxation. As the railways advanced into far-flung rural areas in the mid-19th century, the local shipping trade had begun to collapse. Seamen who had formerly served on smaller coastal vessels were obliged to take up berths on the deep-sea ships sailing from Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London and Cardiff, embarking on round trips that could keep them at sea for up to two years at a time. Left behind and facing the prospect of, at best, sketchy communication, families could chart the journeys of loved ones here in the institute’s copies of Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette, or plot their whereabouts on charts dating back to the 1820s entrusted to the rector of Llanaber. There was also a temperance angle to the institute’s popularity. ‘At the time, there was nowhere else to go except the pub,’ says Janet. ‘The families left behind would get together and talk or play draughts in the reading room, and there’s the billiard room at the back.’ The windows here frame tidal seascapes with small craft bobbing up and down. There are hourly reminders of the railway that runs directly behind the building, shaking all the pictures on their nails (‘That’s why they’re all a bit wonky’).
By the final decades of the 20th century, the institute was in poor shape, sand and water seeping in through the roof and walls. A feasibility study recommended knocking it down, but there was no money to rebuild it. A charitable grant of £1,000 was obtained by the Venerable Wallis Thomas, who was accustomed to waiting here for his bus back to the market town of Dolgellau. By 2005, grant funding had made the building fully ship-shape and weather-tight. Janet had also completed an 86-page application for museum accreditation. Now, the institute is a registered charity, run for the benefit of all its members by a committee of ten who make sure Barmouth’s maritime heritage stays alive. The public is welcome to come in and out, paying nothing for the privilege; there are no museum-style intrusions or explanatory captions. All the pertinent information has been summed up by Janet on the single notice fastened just inside the door with drawing pins. ‘We were told we don’t have enough interpretation, but we don’t know who half the people in these photographs are!’ she says. ‘And we don’t have a brown tourist sign. But there are good reasons to keep this small and let people just come along and find us.’
Meanwhile, in the billiard room, the Gospel Compass (‘For Sailors of All Nations’) declares ‘God Is Love.’ Next to it is a roll of honour: ‘For God, King and Country; on the wall opposite hang photographs of the First Barmouth Group boy scouts and the sea-scout troop from the 1950s and 60s, the broad grins of J. Rees and R. Evans beaming out. Modern notices are more admonitory. No Spitting, No Offensive Language, Closed Sunday, No Mobile Phones. In the old days, competitions were played out here against members of the fire brigade, the railway and the post office, the air was clouded with tobacco and the language spoken was Welsh. Robert Wyn Jones remembers the beautiful litany of members’ names: his grandfather, also Robert, and his brother Jack Jones, both sailing-ship seamen. There was also Bob Minafon and Ifws Jones of the White Star Line, John Jones Bronagraig, ‘Vi’ Morris, Will Barnett and harbour-master John Ellis Morris. Non-sea-goers Walter Roberts (Compton) and Ellis Tank played chess or draughts at the far end of the room.
The snooker competitions continue, newspapers are still read here and the Christmas goose tournament goes on, now played for the prize of a meat voucher from a local butcher. Barmouth has become founder of its institute, says Janet, but money for its upkeep remains an ever-pressing need. For an annual membership fee of just £5, you too could help to ensure its survival.
Barmouth Sailors’ Institute, The Quay, Gwynedd LI42 1EI, Details: barsailinst.org.uk
A version of this article appeared in the November 2018 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
