Good morning, Swansea!

"A man's life should not be judged by how much he has in his bag or what he stores in his mansion... but what he carries in his heart."

That's the line a close friend used to close Tea Cosy Pete's funeral in 2015, a homeless man, and one of the city’s most recognisable figures. Most of Swansea had known him for thirty years by then - but almost nobody, until that week, knew his real name.

This week, we share his story.

Tea Cosy Pete was born Brian Boswell, later becoming Brian Burford after his parents separated and his mother remarried. He came from a middle-class Swansea family, and as a boy he attended Dynevor Grammar School - sitting, in one surviving school photograph, just a few seats from a fellow pupil named Rowan Williams, who would go on to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

He was a strong student: eight O-Levels at the top grade, three straight As at A-Level. Williams remembered him decades later as withdrawn a lot of the time, "but then capable of making some observation that surprised everyone." Once, in class, Burford wrote a poem about crowds and loneliness. His classmates laughed at it. "We rather made fun of it at the time," Williams later admitted, "but I realise now how deeply it was felt and meant."

With grades like his, Oxford was the obvious next step for Pete. He applied, and was turned down.

A family friend, Wayne Llewellyn, who grew up near the Burfords, believed the rejection changed something in him. "I believe his rejection despite his top grades may have contributed to his alternative lifestyle," Llewellyn said. Then came a second, sharper loss: Burford's younger brother Bill, an outstanding rugby player, was killed while a student in London. Llewellyn linked the two events together as the turning point.

No one can say for certain how much of what followed came from Oxford, how much from his brother's death, or how much belonged to Burford alone. What's documented is the outcome: a grammar school boy with three A grades ended up, within a few years, living on the streets of the city he'd grown up in.

Pete’s nickname came from the woolly hat he always wore. By the 1990s, Tea Cosy Pete was Swansea's best-known street figure - and in May 1995, he made nationwide news.

Local Builder Dean James had dropped his wallet on a night out in the city centre with hundreds of pounds inside. Pete found it, spotted James' address on a wage slip tucked inside, and turned up at his door the next day to hand it back.

Some reports say Pete walked two miles to Manselton and others twelve miles to Kittle. Either way, it says the same thing about the kind of man he was.

Another anecdote tells of the time Pete once spent an entire night sitting beside a stranger who had passed out drunk in the street, just to keep watch over him. When the man woke, Pete told him simply: "I'm used to the cold, but you're not - and I wanted to make sure you were alright."

Back to James, who was stunned to receive his wallet with all the cash still in it. "I'll look at tramps in a different light in the future," he told the South Wales Evening Post.

The story of Pete’s good deed soon spread to the national newspapers - and shortly afterwards, an anonymous well-wisher was moved enough to arrange a reward, sent to Swansea West MP Alan Williams, waiting for Pete to collect from the local Labour Party offices on High Street. Weeks went by, but he never went to get it. "Knowing Pete he won't want it, but it may be something of use to someone," a spokesman for Williams said at the time. "I just hope he pops in."

A reporter eventually approached Pete eating lunch from a carrier bag at the Quadrant bus station and asked outright whether he knew the reward was waiting. He nodded. Did he want it? He shook his head, picked up his bags, and walked off without a word.

For the two decades after the wallet story, Pete simply carried on as he always had - a familiar figure around the city centre, quiet, polite, rarely accepting help even when it was offered. He always maintained his life on the streets was his own choice, and resisted every attempt to steer him toward housing support.

One woman recalled seeing him lighting a fire under a bridge - not to keep himself warm, but a group of stray kittens he'd taken to feeding. "That's the sort of person Pete was," she said, "looked after everybody else." A local man, Marc Thomas, said Pete once stepped in to save him from being wrongly arrested, after a fight broke out in town and police mistook him for the culprit.

He was never seen drunk himself and never begged, but he'd happily strike up a conversation with people out for a Friday night drink - economics, politics, literature, whatever came up - before disappearing back into the dark with his bags.

Then, on Monday 26 January 2015, Pete collapsed from a suspected stroke in Castle Square. He was taken to Morriston Hospital, and died there later the same day, aged 66.

It was only when the inquest into his death opened, weeks later, that the name Brian Burford was mentioned publicly for the first time. Most of Swansea had never known him as anything else but Tea Cosy Pete.

Just three days after he died, hundreds of people gathered in Castle Square for a public tribute, photographs of him shown on a big screen - which he used to call his "personal TV" - while speeches were read and the square fell silent for a minute in his memory.

The South Wales Evening Post then launched its own appeal in his memory, raising more than £3,000: enough to cover a proper funeral, with the rest handed to Zac's Place. The paper reported at the time that a plaque would also be installed in the city centre. As far as anyone can tell, it never was.

Pete’s funeral was held at Morriston Crematorium on February 25th, 2015, led by Sean Stillman of Zac's Place.

Stillman said Pete was understanding and stubborn in equal measure, a private man who nonetheless could talk for hours about music, art and literature, and that Swansea had "lost a friend." Of the attention that followed his death, Stillman said simply: "He would've struggled with the attention, he did when he was alive. I don't think we'll ever know his full story."

Rowan Williams, by then a former Archbishop of Canterbury, paid tribute to his old schoolmate, calling him a man of "complete integrity." A Swansea businessman who'd known him for years described it differently, saying Pete offered "a certain continuity" to people passing through the city, and that his simple, gentle honesty was "a breath of fresh air" in a world driven by greed.

Amongst other tributes to Tea Cosy Pete were t-shirts, a song, and later in 2018, a mural painted by Mumbles artist Carys Griffiths in the stairwell of the Three Lamps bar on Castle Square - which closed in 2020.

Castle Gardens itself is being rebuilt right now, with new seating areas planned as part of the redevelopment due to finish next year. Whether Pete's name ends up anywhere in the new square is anyone's guess - but it would be a fitting place for it.

At the funeral, Stillman closed with a line that's stuck with people ever since: "A man's life should not be judged by how much he has in his bag or what he stores in his mansion... but what he carries in his heart."

I’ll catch you on Sunday!

Andrew

Thanks for reading the Swansea Scoop. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend who would find it useful.

Catch you on Wednesday!

Andrew.

Sources: BBC News (25 Feb 2015); ITV News Wales (31 Jan 2015); Wales Online (Robin Turner; Nino Williams, 20 Dec 2018; Katie Hoggan, 4 Dec 2022; and Jan 2015 coverage); Daily Mail (13 Feb 2015); The Telegraph (14 Feb 2015); Wales on Sunday; HoldTheFrontPage (2 Jul 2015); the Dynevor School alumni association; South Wales Evening Post archive (12 June, 15 June, 16 June, 23 June 1995, via the British Library Board); Express & Star (2 May 1995, via the British Library Board); Swansea Council; helptheswanseahomeless.wordpress.com; Tom Emlyn (Bandcamp).