Across the burning sands of Malltraeth and Llanddwyn

The morning was warm, but there was a pleasant breeze that blew white, puffy clouds across a blue sky as we set off across the Cob to Malltraeth.  There was no hint of the scorching hours to come.

We had decided to walk along the Cob to the village where the wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe had once made a home, and then to return the same way before exploring the Cefni salt-marsh and looping back to the car park via Llanddwyn beach and the track through Newborough Forest.

The Cob and the salt-marsh

The Cob is a mile long embankment, over which the Anglesey Coastal path runs.  It is part of a flood defence system, completed in 1812 under the direction of Thomas Telford, which enabled the Cefni Marsh to be drained to facilitate the construction of the A5 turnpike road to the port of Holyhead. Today, the Cob encloses the ‘Pool’, a nature reserve managed by the Countryside Council for Wales. Cefni Marsh is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and is the location of an RSPB reserve.

  

Cefni Marsh and the Pool from the Cob

It was the birds that brought Tunnicliffe here.  Like me, he was born in Cheshire and spent his childhood on the family farm, not far from the village where I grew up. He studied art in Macclesfield and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art.

Charles Tunnicliffe, Swallows on the roof of Shorelands (illustration for ‘What to Look for in Autumn’, Ladybird Books)

Soon he had made his name as a prolific and highly talented commercial artist and engraver whose subject was the countryside and wildlife. In 1932 he illustrated Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter, and in the 1950s and 60s he became widely known for his children’s book illustrations (including the immensely popular Ladybird ‘Seasons’ series) and his wildlife illustrations for cards given away with packets of Brooke Bond tea.

Charles Tunnicliffe, Malltraeth village from the Cob (illustration from ‘Shorelands Summer Diary’)

In 1947, Tunnicliffe and his wife Winifred came to live on Anglesey in a house in Malltraeth called ‘Shorelands’ which looked out directly over the Cefni estuary. In Shorelands Summer Diary (1952) he described their arrival:

On the evening of March the 27th, my wife and I crossed over Telford’s great bridge which spans the Menai Straits, and entered the island county of Anglesey. We were no strangers to this fair country, but our journey to-day was different from all previous ones for, at the end of it, in a little grey village at the head of an estuary, there was an empty house which we hoped to call home as soon as we could get our belongings into it. Our other visits had been short holidays, spent chiefly in watching and drawing birds and landscape of which there was great variety. Several sketch-books and been filled with studies of Anglesey and its birds, and we had been specially delighted to find that he island in spring and autumn was a calling place for many migratory birds, while summer and winter had their own particular and different species. Occasionally, to add to the excitement, a rarity would appear. Whatever the season there were always birds and this fact had greatly influenced us in our choice of a new home. […]

The sun shone, the furniture went into the house … and the Sheldrucks on the sands laughed and cackled all day. There followed days of arranging and re-arranging and gradually order emerged from chaos, the proceedings often suspended while we gazed from the windows. Field-glasses and telescope were always kept in readiness for a sudden grab, but it was astonishing how often they became buried under other material not yet put in its proper place. such was the case when we heard the call of wild geese one evening…

The view of the estuary from Shorelands (illustration from ‘Shorelands Summer Diary’)

With the abundance of bird life and the views across to the distant mountains of Snowdonia, Tunnicliffe settled into a life of painting his favourite subjects. From the window of his studio at ‘Shorelands’, overlooking the estuary, he observed and painted. He watched the birds fishing along the shoreline, the oystercatchers pausing in their quick runs to probe for shellfish. When the geese came sweeping in as winter approached he caught their wingbeats for all to see in his sketch notes.

Charles Tunnicliffe, Geese flying up the marsh (illustration from ‘Shorelands Summer Diary’)

In Shorelands Summer Diary Tunnicliffe wrote:

The house is well named ‘Shorelands” for only a stout stone wall and a row of rough upright timbers protect it from the tides of a mile-wide estuary. Years ago the estuary extended almost into the very heart of the island, but in the year 1812 a sea wall was built, and the inland area over which the tides used to flood was reclaimed and is now good farmland, dotted about with grey stone farmsteads, and intersected by numerous dykes and raised earth banks. The sea wall is called locally ‘The Cob’, and it has its beginning very close to the village at a spot where a bridge spans the river and its two flood-water canals. River and canals are disciplined by high man-made banks for some miles inland, indeed as far as the river is tidal. The bridge marks the end of the village street and the beginning of the road over the marsh. After crossing the bridge the road swings slightly inland, then deviates shorewards again and touches the Cob at its far end. Thus, between Cob and road, there is an area of brackish pool and swamp which is beloved of the birds, and both road and Cob make ideal vantage points for their study. Many are the happy hours I, have spent there. […]

But to return home: the windows in the front of the house command views from east to south-west. Looking south-east, with the Cob extending across its whole width, is the mile-wide estuary. Beyond, filling the middle distance, is a long ridge of high ground criss-crossed by hedges and dotted about with farms, which at its seaward end deteriorates into rock and sand-dune, and above this ridge loom the great mountains of Caernarvonshire, the kingdom of Eryri, with Snowdon lording it over all – a stupendous panorama.

Charles Tunnicliffe, High tide over the garden wall (illustration from ‘Shorelands Summer Diary’)

We made our way back along the Cob – slowly, since everyone we met along the way seemed happy to stop and chat awhile.  We paused, too, to observe the birds in the marsh, the school of great grey mullet in the Pool, and the horses that roam free across the marsh. Walking in this direction, the views of the distant mountains, seen above the pines of Newborough Forest, are stunning.

Cefni marsh and the distant mountains: as we saw it, and as Tunnicliffe drew it

Back at our staring point, the car park at the Newborough end of the Cob, we now set off to explore Cefni salt-marsh, following the Anglesey coastal path. The first stretch wound through shady woodland – very boggy in wet weather from the evidence of the extensive sections of duckboard provided.

A shady start to this section of the walk

After a mile or so, the path leaves woodland for the open salt marsh, following the edge of Newborough Forest.  With tall Corsican pines to our left and acres of marram grass to the right, we followed the path as it continued along the edge of the estuary of Afon Cefni where clumps of tamarisk were in flower.

Out onto the saltmarsh, skirting the edge of Newborough Forest

Tamarisk was not the only flower to be seen along this stretch; as Charles Tunnicliffe observed on June 20th in Shorelands Summer Diary:

The dunes are full of flowers. Viper’s Bugloss stands in spires of blue as vivid as any delphinium; ragged robin blooms in delicate patches of pink, and in the damp places yellow iris is in flower. Hugging the sand the fluffy seed-heads of creeping willow mingle with heartease of an amazing variety of colours from deep blue through yellow to white. Among all this the Wheatears, both young and adult, fly round close to the ground, or perch on some dead stalk and utter their ‘Tcheck! Tcheck!’ flashing their pied tails as they take wing.

Out onto the saltmarsh

Soon we reached the point where the path turns south to follow the sand dunes that edge Penhros Traeth down towards the causeway out to Llanddwyn Island.  By now the sun was at its zenith and it was blazingly hot.  Although the saltmarsh and sandflats of the Cefni are important feeding areas for wildfowl and wading birds we saw very few. Only mad dogs and Englishmen…

Across the burning sand

When I was a kid, at home we had an old 78 of ‘Cool Water’, recorded by The Sons of the Pioneers in 1948, the year I was born.  The words came flooding back as we toiled across the burning sands:

All day I’ve faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water, cool water
Old Dan and I with throats burnt dry
And souls that cry for water
Cool, clear, water

Keep a-movin, Dan, don’tcha listen to him, Dan
He’s a devil, not a man
And he spreads the burning sand with water
Dan, can ya see that big, green tree?
Where the water’s runnin’ free
And it’s waitin’ there for me and you?
It’s water, cool, clear water.

The wreck of the Athena on Traeth Penrhos

The tide was far out and we trudged on across an endless desert of scorching sand. Nearing Llanddywn Island we came upon the remains of a wreck, buried in the sand, but the ship’s spars  exposed at low tide.  This is all that remains of the Athena, a ship that ran into trouble during a winter storm in December 1852. It was sailing from Alexandria to Liverpool, and hadn’t got far to when it was wrecked upon this shore. Thanks to the courage of the local lifeboat men, the 14 crew of the Athena were rescued and taken to safety on Llanddwyn Island.

At last – cool water!

We were glad, eventually, to find a way through the dunes into the shade of the forest.  With some difficulty we found our way back to our starting point through the bewildering maze of trails in the forest. Two thirsty walkers and one very thirsty dog!

See also

• Charles Tunnicliffe at Oriel Ynys Mon: ‘the love of nature absorbed him’
• Walking out to Llanddwyn island
• A midsummer eve walk to the beach beneath the mountains
• Big sky country: a walk on Llanddwyn beach

Walking out to Llanddwyn island

This time we wanted to walk out to the island.  Last September, during a short visit to Anglesey, we chanced  upon the beach where the pines of Newborough Forest give way to dunes and some three miles of golden sand.  At the far end of Llanddwyn beach is the Island, Ynys Llanddwyn; from a distance it seemed a magical place, its rugged headland topped by two white towers and a tall Celtic cross.

The sandy trail to Llanddwyn Island

Although it is an island, you can walk out it when the tide is low.  With dog in tow we set out, only to be frustrated when we encountered notices that informed us the island is out of bounds to dogs.  So we had to go over one of us at a time, while the other sat in the shade of the pines with the dog.

Well that just ain’t fair…

I set off across the sand.  As you approach the island you pass several large rocks that protrude from the sand. Geologists are excited by these formations: they are pillow lavas, mounds of rock formed by undersea volcanic eruptions.  As the hot molten rock met the cold seawater a balloon-like skin was formed, which then filled with more lava, forming the characteristic pillow shape. These rocks extend down much of the length of Llanddwyn Island, giving it its distinctive outline and rolling topography.

  

Outcrops of pillow lava give form to Llanddwyn Island

Arriving at the island, I was met by the first of what turned out to be a series of elaborately carved gates, decorated with swirling Celtic motifs and elegant lettering.  The path beyond was just as lovely, constructed from pebbles and crushed seashells and edged with colourful masses of wild flowers.

Seashells and rocks form the footpath on Llanddwyn

In legend this really is a magical place. The name Llanddwyn means ‘the church of Saint Dwynwen’, the fifth century daughter of a Welsh prince of Brecon.  She fell in love with a young man named Maelon, but her father, the King of Powys, forbade their union and had him turned to ice. At this, Dwynwen retreated to the solitude of Llanddwyn Island to follow the life of a hermit, praying that all true lovers find happiness.

She has become the Welsh patron saint of lovers, making her the Welsh equivalent of Saint Valentine. Her feast day, 25 January, is often celebrated with cards and flowers, just as is 14 February is as Valentine’s Day. In Wales, lovers may exchange gifts of love spoons or love jewellery engraved  with poetry. Some may even come to Yns Llanddwyn.

The ruins of the 16th century chapel

As the legend of Saint Dwynwen grew, visitors would travel to the island to leave offerings at a small chapel that had become her shrine; indeed, so popular was this as a place of pilgrimage that Llanddwyn became the richest community in the area during Tudor times. A substantial chapel was built in the 16th century on the site of Dwynwen’s original chapel. The ruins of this can still be seen today.

Llanddwyn automatic lighthouse

There are two white towers on the island.  The smaller one functioned as a navigational beacon until 1972, when it was turned into an automatic lighthouse. The larger tower at the end of the island, built in 1845, has a distinctive shape, since it was modelled on the windmills of Anglesey. Now closed, in 2004 it featured as a location in the romantic thriller Half Light.

Llanddwyn lighthouse: modelled on the windmills of Anglesey

There are some cottages nearby which date from the early 1800s when they housed pilots who guided vessels into Caernarfon harbour. The pilots also acted as lighthouse keepers and lifeboat men; the cannon in front of the cottages was used to alert members of the lifeboat crew in times of emergency.

A place of outstanding natural beauty

This is a beautiful place. Wildflowers abound. There are multitudes of nesting seabirds (apparently, in the spring Ynys yr Adar, a small islet off the tip of Llanddwyn, hosts one percent of the total British breeding population of cormorants ). Not surprisingly, the wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe had a studio on the island for over 30 years.  There’s one painting of Tunnicliffe’s, Coming in to Land, which must have been done from sketches made at the mouth of Afon Cefni, looking toward the lighthouse of Ynys Llanddwyn and the Snowdonia mountains beyond.  It depicts one of my favourite sights, a skein of geese in flight.  You can hear the honking.

 Charles Tunnicliffe, ‘Coming in to Land’

Then it was Rita’s turn to see the island, while I sat in the shade of the pines on a stiflingly hot day with a dozing dog.  Reunited, the three of us made our way back along the path through the forest, and along the edge of Newborough Warren’s dune slacks, back to the cottage for tea.

Returning for tea through the Corsica pines

On YouTube there is a video of scenes shot on Llanddwyn Island, with music by Llangwm Male Voice Choir:

Charles Tunnicliffe at Oriel Ynys Mon: ‘the love of nature absorbed him’

The cover of Oriel Ynys Mon’s publication,Tunnicliffe

In my last post I wrote of our visit to Oriel Ynys Mon on Anglesey to see the exhibition of paintings of Venice by Kyffin Williams.  It was the second time I’d been to the gallery and on both occasions I was delighted to see exhibits from the collection of work by Charles Tunnicliffe held by the gallery.  If you grew up in the fifties like me you probably read Ladybird nature books and collected Brooke Bond tea cards – all illustrated by Tunnicliffe. You might even have read the Puffin edition of Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter, with its cover and beautiful illustrations also by Tunnicliffe.

Another reason for my interest in Tunnicliffe is that he grew up not far from where I lived.  He was born in 1901 in Langley, just outside Macclesfield, and spent his early years on a farm at nearby Sutton Lane Ends where he helped out with daily tasks and began to take a keen interest in observing animals and birds closely. There’s an early drawing, The Kestrel, which I’m pretty certain depicts the view from there, with the Cheshire plain and the smoking chimneys of Macclesfield’s textile and silk mills smoking in the distance.

Tunnicliffe, The Kestrel, 1926

At the village school he learned to draw and became interested in art, later winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London where he rubbed shoulders with  Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Edward Burra.  After graduating Tunnicliffe began to make a living from selling etchings and engravings of rural scenes, but with the onset of the depression in 1930s the market for prints declined, so he began to teach illustration and graphic design. His big breakthrough came in 1932  after his wife had encouraged him to submit illustrations for a new edition of Henry Williamson’s best-selling novel Tarka the Otter. It was this series of wood engravings that bought Tunnicliffe widespread recognition.

In 1947 Tunnicliffe’s long association with Anglesey began when he moved from Manchester to ‘Shorelands’ a cottage at Malltraeth, on the estuary of the Afon Cefni near Newborough, where he lived until his death in 1979.  On Anglesey, Tunnicliffe set about consolidating his knowledge of the island’s many bird haunts.  In 1952, one of his best-loved books, Shorelands Summer Diary, was published – one of the artist’s masterpieces, it’s an evocative record of one glorious season on Anglesey.  In 1954, Tunnicliffe was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy in recognition, not just of his excellence as an illustrator and bird portraitist, but also for the breadth of his achievement in a variety of media – watercolour, pen and ink, woodblock engraving, etching and scraperboard – and across a variety of subject matter.

Tunnicliffe illustrated these Ladybird books

His name became a familiar one to kids like me in the 1950s, reading the Ladybird Books that he illustrated (I remember I used to own the ‘seasons’ series) and collecting the Brooke Bond tea cards that featured his meticulous paintings of birds and wild flowers. One of the first albums I collected was the set of his bird portraits from 1957.

Tunnicliffe, Bird Portraits album cover, 1957

Tunnicliffe, Bird Portraits cards, 1957

By the sixties, my brother – ten years younger than me – was collecting Brooke Bond cards.  This is a spread from the Tunnicliffe-illustrated album Wild Birds in Britain album of 1965, which contains this prescient introduction by Tunnicliffe:

There is always something new to be discovered about birds. Also we must not forget their beauty – a difficult quality to define, but one which is made up of form and colour, balance and movement ~ quality to which all sensitive and alert people respond, and which birds have in abundance. Surely, then, these value able creatures are worthy of our care and protection. But alas! modern man’s activities are, on the whole, against their survival. Towns increase in size, land is drained, harmful chemicals are used in the cultivation of the soil, more and more people shoot birds, and so the destruction goes on. Will many of our birds be but a memory in a few years to come ? Some are already just that.

Tunnicliffe, Wild Birds in Britain album, 1965

In Tunnicliffe’s bird paintings, artistic interpretation was rooted in meticulous observation and precise scientific method.  This is powerfully illustrated in the current display of the artist’s work at Oriel Ynys Mon, which features a number of the measured drawings through which Tunnicliffe recorded – from various angles and to within a millimetre of accuracy – the details of specimens that had been brought to him.

Charles Tunnicliffe painting a measured drawing

These post-mortem studies (always the result of chance – Tunnicliffe never countenanced the killing of birds) he called his ‘feather maps’;  they were used as the basis for his finished works.

Tunnicliffe, measured drawing of Black-headed Gull

The current exhibits include several astonishingly detailed measured drawings of birds – and one of a fox which I found particularly breathtaking.  These are large works – near to life-size, and every detail of the animal’s anatomy and colouring had been carefully observed, with the fine detail of each hair of the fox’s coat almost visible.

Tunnicliffe, measured drawing of a fox, 1964

Tunnicliffe, Measured drawing of a female Brown Hare, 1973

Peter Scott, the ornithologist, broadcaster and fellow artist, believed that ‘the verdict of posterity in time to come is likely to rate Charles Tunnicliffe the greatest wildlife artist of the twentieth century’.  Looking at the measured drawings, you think he might be right.

Another source leading to the finished works were the high-speed drawings that Tunnicliffe made in the field, especially around Cob Lake, the Cefni Estuary, South Stack Cliffs, Llyn Coron, Aberfraw, and Cemlyn.  These were then worked up in a superb set of sketchbooks full of accurate and colourful ‘memory drawings’.

These sketchbooks are works of art in themselves, and examples of these are on display at Oriel Ynys Mon, too. The open pages reveal the drawings and watercolours that the artist made to quickly record the details of the colouring and movement of a particular bird or animal.  Alongside, he would add copious hand-written notes.

Tunnicliffe, Short-Eared Owl and Montagu’s Harrier, Cefni saltmarsh, sketchbook, 1956

Tunnicliffe kept his sketch­­books and measured draw­ings at home in Anglesey until the end of his life. He could not work without them and always had them by his side for reference.  At his death, much of his personal collection of work was bequeathed to Anglesey council on the condition that it was housed together and made available for public viewing. This is the body of work which can now be seen at Oriel Ynys Môn.

Tunnicliffe, Coming in to Land

There’s one painting of Tunnicliffe’s, Coming in to Land, which must have been painted from sketches made at the mouth of Afon Cefni, looking toward the lighthouse of Ynys Llanddwyn and the Snowdonia mountains beyond.  It depicts one of my favourite sights, a skein of geese in flight.  You can hear the honking.  There’s a beautifully-composed, balletic quality to Curlews Alighting, below.

CharlesTunnicliffe, Curlews Alighting

Sometimes there is a tendency to dismiss the work of an artist like Tunnicliffe as mere illustration, but, as his friend Kyffin Williams said in a tribute to Tunnicliffe at the time of his first major Anglesey exhibition:

If this was so, it didn’t worry the countryman from Cheshire for his work was done for love: love of birds and of animals, of the wild flowers on the rocks above the sea, of the wind, of the sun and of the changing seasons.

The love of nature absorbed him … Every day he worked; in the fields, on the shore, in the Anglesey marshes and in his studio overlooking the sea.  When the world of art was arguing to decide what was art and what was not, Charles Tunnicliffe just lived and worked. […]

The best of his measured drawings are great works of art, as are some of his wood engravings and etchings.  All these were done from deep knowledge, so the integrity is immense, as in his wonderful etching of the sitting hare.

Indeed; it might be Durer.

Tunnicliffe, The Sitting Hare, 1920s

Or take Dry Clothes and Rain, a work from around 1926 that hangs in Macclesfield’s West Bank Museum, where a room has been dedicated to his work that I must visit one day soon.

Charles Tunnicliffe, Dry Clothes and Rain, 1926

 Video

Welsh language art programme Pethe looks at a 2011 exhibition at Oriel Ynys Mon of works by Kyffin Williams and Charles Tunnicliffe including archive footage of the painters at work (subtitles).

Slideshow of Tunnicliffe’s bird paintings (you may prefer to mute the soundtrack)

See also

• The Tunnicliffe collection at Oriel Ynys Mon: Tunnicliffe Society web page with many excellent images
• Charles Tunnicliffe Society website: this index has links to pages on all aspects of Tunnicliffe’s work, including his Brooke Bond tea albums