Masters of Sex actor Michael Sheen turns out to have helped salvage the iron and steel gate to the terrace of the Laugharne boathouse occupied by Dylan Thomas, where he wrote Under Milk Wood and Do Not Go Gentle, famously in a shed (see last weeks eSalvo Sumer Holiday Shed edition).
 
Sheen, together with Charley Uzzell Edwards aka graffitist Pure Evil, and his Dad, John - a leading Welsh contemporary artist, former engineering illustrator, and miner's son - dug the gate out of the mud below the boathouse in 1984.
 
Sheen appeared in the rich BBC Wales TV adaptation of Under Milk Wood in May. Dylan Thomas spent his last creative years at Laugharne, prior to his untimely death in 1953 aged 39 in New York.
 
The gate had been a feature in John Uzzell-Edwards home. "We were walking down the hill on a jolly boys' day out to check out the boathouse when we saw this metal sticking out of the mud," Charley said. "Me and Michael were wearing cords and chunky sweaters in the Brideshead Revisited style of the time - not really dressed for mud larking - but we managed to get it out."
 
According to the BBC, Charley Uzzell-Edwards, whose father died earlier this year, said the gate had been on show in the garden of the family's Carmarthenshire home and he wanted to sell it to raise some money for his mother.
 
"It would be nice if it went to a collector who would appreciate its history - in my dreams an American will see it and think it's just the thing he needs," he said.
 
A bust of Dylan Thomas said to be the only one sculpted while he was alive is one of the other highlights of the centenary auction, which includes a range of books, letters, manuscripts and mementoes. Made by sculptor and friend Hugh Oloff de Wet, the cold-cast resin bust is predicted to fetch up to £5,000. It is accompanied by the sculptor's original drawing for the piece and one of 10 bronze miniatures he cast.
 
Here is a gate reference from Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

by Dylan Thomas written in 1945
 
The gate will be sold, together with photos of the recovery operation with Sheen and Edwards in their Brideshead Revisited era, with an estimate of £800 at the Welsh Sale and Dylan Thomas centenary auction to be held by Roger Jones this Saturday at 11am in Cardiff.