W.H Davies - Welsh Poet

W.H Davies - Tramp poet and writer from Pill, Newport

I went out earlier to the main Post Office in town to post a parcel to a friend in East Anglia. Due to heavy traffic heading out of town I took a different route home and found myself coming through the Pill area of the city, passing the now boarded up 'Church House Inn'. When I got home I phoned my friend of forty-0dd years, LC, and asked how long the 'Church House' had been closed. 'About two years' was the reply. Hmm, That's how long it is since I was in that part of Pill. The thing is, with the new SDR bridge open, from my side of town you need not go near Pill any more.

What is the point of this? Well 'The Church House Inn' is the childhood home of the Welsh poet W.H Davies. I vividly remember having the ruler across my hand in school in the early sixties, for talking in class when I was suppose to be learning about him and learning to recite his famous poem 'Leisure'.


William Henry Davies was born in Pill in 1871, in fairly lowly circumstances I should imagine, his father died when he was 2 years old and when his mother re-married he went to live with his grandparents in 'The Church House Inn'.

Davies was a badly behaved teenager according the local history, and was very dissatisfied with life in Newport. He left for London eventually, and then Bristol and finally went to America in 1893. He spent the next six years intermittently working and begging his way across North America, catching rides on the steam trains which had opened up this huge continent. He was the classical hobo, regularly being jailed for vagrancy. On one occasion he tried to mount a moving express train and was dragged under the wheels, suffered serious injuries which resulted in the loss of his leg below the knee. It was as this point, when he could no longer do manual work, that he turned to writing and poetry. Once back in London it is said that he mixed with the Bohemian set, literary giants such as George Bernard Shaw & W.H Auden to name but a few.


W.H Davies wrote many notable poems and essays during his literary career the most well known being 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp'. However, with regard to his most famous poem 'Leisure', the opening two lines are known by most of us - even though people cannot bring to mind the author.


At the age of fifty he married a prostitute thirty years his junior. Davies continued writing and an account of his marriage was published in 1980 titled 'Young Emma'.


He last returned to Newport in the 1930's for the unveiling a plaque in his honour at 'The Church House Inn', but he was unwell. His health had deteriorated, not helped by the weight of his wooden leg and he died in September 1940 at the age of 69 years.

A statue inspired by his poem 'Leisure' can be seen in Commercial Street, Newport. (see next Blog).