Stepney Arms Hotel, Llanelli; Ship and Castle, Llanelli; Stepney Arms, Llanelli

Stepney Arms Hotel in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, stands as a nineteenth-century hotel, old enough to have hosted sailors, merchants and wandering families before modern cameras existed. It may have smelled of coal smoke, wet wool and frying fat, with laughter bouncing off wooden floors while storms raged outside. The Ship and Castle name suggests travel, distance and return, as if the room itself remembered journeys made by people no longer named.