No Sign Bar, Swansea

This is by far the most interesting historic pub in Swansea and was frequented by the young Dylan Thomas, one of Wales’s most famous poets. Its origins are said to go back several centuries but the modern history of the building dates from the foundation of Munday’s, a firm of wine merchants established in 1837 and which came to own many premises in Swansea. Here they had a wine shop, two bars and cellars all of which have left traces today and if you visit at a quiet time you can take a look around and see how a Victorian Wine Merchants operated. The front part was Munday’s wine merchants shop and beyond the remaining third of a glazed screen and cast-iron columns that divided the shop from the drinking premises behind there are two separate old bar counters, which were no doubt in two separate rooms originally, and an old glass-fronted display cabinet. Entrance to these was from Salubrious Passage to the left of the building beyond the present, adjoining shop.

The pub now stretches back far to the rear where there is an apparently imported bar counter and on the first floor is Munday’s Bar, open at weekends and for private functions. It is said that the unusual name is because the drinking room at the back of the shop was unadvertised. The cellars of the No Sign Bar, Swansea, with two parallel brick-arched areas divided by an arcade of cast-iron columns probably date back 200 years. The gantry crane on rails that would have been used to hoist and move heavy casks of sherry, port or whatever liquor Munday’s were holding is an extraordinary survival. The cellars are now ‘The Vault’, a live music venue open at weekends.

Salubrious Passage appeared in Thomas’s story ''The Followers” renamed Paradise Passage – the nearby Dylan Thomas Centre housed in the 18th-century former Guildhall celebrates his life and achievements.