There are no records of the house being in existence prior to 1834, when it was leased by the local authority to a family named Scourfield. The road in which it stands was originally called Cliff Road, but has been renamed to Dylan's Walk. Thomas first visited the village of Laugharne with a friend, the poet
Glyn Jones, in 1934 and was attracted to it. He moved there four years later with his wife
Caitlin, and the Boathouse was later bought for him by Margaret Taylor, first wife of the historian
A. J. P. Taylor. Dylan and Caitlin brought up their three children,
Aeronwy, Llewellyn and Colm. For his parents, Thomas rented "Pelican House" in the town, and they lived there from 1949 until his father's death in 1953. After Dylan's own death in 1953, Caitlin Thomas was keen to leave Laugharne because of its painful memories. After she left to live in Italy, the Boathouse became the home of her late husband's mother, Florence Thomas, for the last five years of her life. It was subsequently purchased from Margaret Taylor by the trust managing the Thomas estate, on behalf of Caitlin, who sold it on to an educational charity before it was eventually acquired by
Carmarthenshire County Council and opened to the public as a tourist attraction. Thomas used a shed a little further along Cliff Road as his retreat, and did most of his writing there while he lived at the Boathouse. His poem, "Over Sir John's Hill", celebrated the view of the
estuary it gave him, Sir John's Hill being located across the bay. Thomas's shed inspired
Roald Dahl to create his own writing hut at his
Gipsy House, his home in Buckinghamshire. ==Museum==