The Kardomah Gang,The Kardomah Boys, or Kardomah Group is the name given to the group of bohemian friends – various artists, musicians, poets and writers – who frequented the Kardomah Café in Castle Street, Swansea, Wales, in the 1930s.[1][2] Regulars included poets Charles Fisher, Dylan Thomas, John Prichard and Vernon Watkins, composer and linguist Daniel Jones, artists Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy, Mabley Owen and Tom Warner.[1][3] It was in this café, just across the road from the offices of the Evening Post newspaper where Thomas and Fisher worked, that these friends would drink coffee and discuss, amongst many subjects, Einstein & Epstein, Greta Garbo, Stravinsky, death, religion and Picasso.
During February 1941, Swansea was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, known as 'The Three Nights Blitz'. Castle Street was just one of the many streets in Swansea that suffered badly; the rows of shops, including the 'Kardomah Café', were destroyed. After the bombing, Dylan Thomas came back to visit Swansea. He later he wrote about the devastation in his radio play entitled Return Journey to Swansea. In the play, he describes the café as being "Razed to the snow". The Kardomah Café reopened after the war in a new location, and can still be found today in the city's Portland Street, a short walk from where the original stood.[2] The Castle Street site where the Kardomah Café was situated in the days of the Kardomah Gang had previously been the site of a Congregational Chapel. It was in this church that Dylan Thomas's parents were married in 1903.[2]
Some recollections of the cafe and the people who met there were recorded by Fisher and are available at kardomahgroup.net [1]