Tryfan and Tyn Towyn

Towering Tryfan and the charm of Tyn Towyn

Artist Charles F Tunnicliffe creates a cinematic ‘sketch-book’ of landscape elements on Anglesey and in Snowdonia. There are shots of Tyn Towyn, a picture-book cottage on the beach at Porth Nobla, Llanfaelog, and an old ‘clapper’ bridge where cattle come to drink, a distant windmill visible. Sheep pass Dyffryn Mymbyr farmhouse, Capel Curig (once owned by T Firbank, author of ‘I Bought a Mountain’ and later by E Kirby), and Tryfan mountain and a Galloway bull loom large.

It was evident from a young age that Tunnicliffe (1901-79) had a gift for drawing. From a farm in Cheshire he won scholarships to the Macclesfield School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. He worked as a wood engraver, a teacher and an illustrator for Ladybird books and Brooke Bond tea cards. He also illustrated books by e.g. Alison Uttley and Henry Williamson. He married Winifred Wonnacott (1902-69), a fellow RCA scholarship student from Holywood, Belfast, and they moved to ‘Shorelands’, a bungalow by the Cefni estuary, Malltraeth, in 1947. Their friends included naturalists T G ‘Wack’ Walker, Norman ‘Nomad’ Ellison, ] Ted Breeze Jones (also a photographer) and artist Kyffin Williams.