JMW Turner painting location

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JMW Turner painting location

The renowned painter JMW Turner depicted Conwy Castle several times, from different angles, around 1800. This painting, reproduced by kind permission of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, records the area west of the castle before the railway was constructed.

The bridge in the painting is upstream of the bridge that now carries Llanrwst Road over the Gyffin stream. The road in Turner’s time would have led up to Porth y Felin, one of three original entrances to the walled town. In the painting, the bridge hides the area at the mouth of the Gyffin stream where ships and boats unloaded goods, before the suspension bridge and present quay were built.

Turner also depicts how the base of the bakehouse tower, on the castle’s south side, was missing. The damage was caused deliberately in 1655, to prevent the castle being used again as a defence. The tower was repaired in the 1880s by the London & North Western Railway.

Beyond the castle in the painting lies the wooded island which Thomas Telford used as the foundation for the eastern abutment of his suspension bridge, which opened in 1826.

Where is this HiPoint?

Postcode: LL32 8HR.

Website of the Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester