Plas Gelli is a Grade II listed building, comprising the original Jacobean farmhouse, built in the 1680s, with a four-room cross-wing added to the farmhouse in the late 18th C. The farmyard comprised stabling for four horses, as well as the Ty Pair, the outdoor servants' quarters. Gelli also has a walled garden and an octagonal thatched lodge at the head of the drive, of the kind often associated with
John Nash. The writer and poet
Dylan Thomas lived at Gelli from 1941 to 1943, though he was frequently in London during this period. Dylan and his wife Caitlin shared the cross-wing of the house with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Dylan and Caitlin's daughter, Aeronwy, was named after the river Aeron. The farmhouse part of the mansion was lived in by Thomas and Mary Davies (who farmed Gelli's 75 acres) and their granddaughter, Amanda Williams, who has provided a vivid account of Dylan's time at Gelli. The journalist, Lyn Ebenezer, has also interviewed Talsarn residents about Dylan's time in the village. Some of Dylan's colourful letters from Gelli can be found in his
Collected Letters. There are also a handful of poems associated with Dylan's residence at Gelli. In Dylan's time, there were some twenty-six people living in Talsarn itself, whose facilities included a school, shop, garage, post office, blacksmith and the Red Lion pub. Dylan, Caitlin, Vera and Evelyn left Gelli in 1944 and moved a few miles away to
New Quay. The
Dylan Thomas Trail passes through the grounds of the mansion on a public footpath. ==Talsarn poets==