This is what I’ve learned about Charles Tunnicliffe from reading his Shorelands Winter Diary (with apologies to those who already know all this).

He and his wife Winifred moved to Malltraeth in March 1947 and he kept a diary of his first year there.  The Shorelands Summer Diary was published in 1952 and was a succès d’estime, much admired for its close observation of bird life on the estuary and its detailed drawings.  But it was expensive to produce, so the winter months were unpublished until after his death.

They give a good sense of country life after the war.  For anyone inclined to romanticise it, there was a great amount of shooting, not in an organised way by the local grandees, but by local schoolchildren who would take a pop shot during the shooting season at the geese as they flew overhead.

Here is the estuary at Malltreath, as seen from close to Shorelands at very low tide today:-

And from the Cob, where Tunnicliffe often walked, as did we:-