Tim Bannerman Makes Sandcastles

‘History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.’-Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand  

And Eternity in an hour.

From Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

You may remember the scene from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the Richard Dreyfuss character commandeers his child’s sandpit and obsessively builds what turns out to be an accurate model of a mountain in the US. Why? As we find out, it is where an alien spaceship is due to land and Dreyfuss plays one of several people drawn compulsively to be there.

I, too, suffer from a similar compulsion – but, as far as I know, it has nothing to do with aliens. It is simply the desire to use the time between the tide going down and coming back up again to build the perfect sandcastle.

Creator, designer, builder and all round sandcastle philosopher, Tim Bannerman

Now, the seaside is where you go as a child, and later with your children, later still your grandchildren, or other people’s children’s children, to enjoy a seaside holiday, be it a day trip, a whole week or, if you’re very lucky maybe more, by the sea. 

While some people like nothing better than to lie down on a towel in the hot sun, well slathered in Ambre Solaire, others are busy throwing beachballs – remember them? – playing French cricket, fishing in rock pools or just running back and forth into and out of the sea. Or building sandcastles.

Most of my seaside holidays as a child were in less fashionable resorts, like Llandudno, or the gas-mantled campsite in Llyngwyrill, in Wales. Or the more pebbly beaches around Bridport, with the occasional foray overseas to Brittanny and later, more exotically, the Club Mediterranee beach villages in Italy and Corsica. But for me the typical seaside was a Dorset beach under a grey sky where the sea was so cold it took your breath away. 

Tim builds with son Josh on the Dorset beach of Lyme Regis

What I learned quite quickly, however, was that given a choice between the steeply shelving pebbles of Burton Bradstock and the flat sand (and fossils) of Charmouth, there was no contest. For Charmouth offered an opportunity – when not hunting for the bellamites and ammonites that used to litter the further part of the beach under the constantly crumbling cliffs – to dig.

But as I grew older I realised that sandcastles were a more serious business than just heaping sand into shapeless piles, with or without the aid of a bucket.

I, like many people, have built sandcastles from an early age. Like most parents, I have built sandcastles with my children, to share with them the delight of creating something from flat sand. I must have enjoyed something similar with my father and yet, for him, it never reached the literal heights it does for me.

Why is this? I ask myself. You wait for the moment the tide slips down to reveal that perfect, flat, expanse of sand. Then, armed with garden spades and smaller to suit the age range and aptitude of your builders, you set to work. 

Several hours later, you have built not just a big pile of sand but have fashioned it, cutting away, shaping, carving, hollowing and tunnelling, until there it stands. A proud, even noble edifice, ready for King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, not to mention Guinevere in her whimple, to take up residence.

However – and you don’t have to be a Cnut to know what comes next – the moon has been quietly, invisibly, working its magic. The tide is not only on its way back but on you, all around you and starting to eat at all the work you’ve done.

When you return next day – what do you find? Nothing. Just flat, unblemished sand. As if nothing had ever been there but flat, unblemished sand.

So – why?

Because, I tell myself, it is like life. We start helpless. Small, soft, plump little balls of blubber and bone, where, nine months before, there had been nothing. And then we grow and learn to walk and talk and do things, make things, turn blank sheets of paper into brilliant splashes of colour and form. And, similarly, build our lives from the blank sheet into a way in the world, for better or worse. 

But the work! God, it’s hard. Nevertheless, from time to time, there are rewards along the way. Little towers of achievement of one kind or another, that get kicked over, that you pick up the pieces from and start again. And, perhaps, children come, your children. And you find a place to live in, with a roof over your head, and a garden to grow things in.

You build a career, of some careering kind, subject to all the storms and sunny patches, the disasters, triumphs and close shaves that threaten to end it all. And, if you’re lucky, you retire, still just about intact. Until, one day, you’re not. And then – that’s it. 

What’s left? Photographs, words, memories and a pile of stuff your family have to get rid of one way or another. Maybe keeping something for the next generation to look at and wonder who he or she was, not so easy in this digital age when it all gets lost in the clouds. And that’s all there are, distant echoes of what once was. This absence once called you. Apart from that – flat sand and the sound of the sea.

So, maybe, building sandcastles is no more than a metaphor for life. The life, perhaps, you would like it to be. Grand, splendid, magisterial even. Something that draws people magnetically to marvel at its scale, its embellishments, its sheer presence in an otherwise unremarkable flat sand world. Or does that sound delusional?

Let’s say it was just a life. Yet unique. That appeared one day, hung around for a while and then – pouf! Gone. One minute there was nothing, then something, powerful and present, and then – nothing. How did that happen? 

But when it was there, just for that brief instant, caught in that first or last flash of the rising, sinking sun, my goodness it was arresting, wasn’t it? Touching, romantic, funny, poignant, theatrical, peculiar. Like nothing you had ever known before. Well, it must be magic. Feels like it has always been there, will always be there. Caught in that moment of magic. So what is it?

It is a Castle.

And you can touch it. It’s real. You can even go inside it. Marvel. And imagine.

For it is imagination. Like a poem or a painting or a story. A fairy story, a legend, a pop-up book that opens to a miraculous butterfly, spreading its jewelled wings.

But most of all, it is like the performance of a wonderful play. A play in which you live and breathe the story, become the character, the hero or heroine perhaps, that fills the stage. It is theatre, pure and simple. A stage whose Jean Cocteau backdrop and chiascuro mystery lacks only you to fill, bestride or strut and fret your hour upon it. And infinitely complex. Just like life. Given half a chance.

It is also a kind of race. A race against the sun, the moon and the pitiless, devouring, all-conquering sea. Just to achieve some kind of finished thing, however big or small, before the tide comes in and sweeps it all away. 

Which is why it’s worth the work. As much as anything to be able to see it through a child’s eyes, a child’s imagination in which it is everything that King Ludwig II ever dreamed of, even if he was bonkers (and rich) enough to actually build them out of stone.

But, as the poet Adrian Mitchell says:

Some think to build on rock; wise too are we

Who build such sure foundations by the sea.

So – let’s look at the mechanics of the thing. How do you go about building a proper sandcastle, as opposed to a pile of sand, without cheating or going over the top in some über-Baroque, up-your-fundament, soppy Disney kind of way?

First of all – The Sand.

There is no point trying to build a castle where there is either no sand – you’d be surprised what people will attempt on hopelessly pebbly beaches – or sand that has grains that are too big to hold together. Rocks are okay and can add another whole dimension – as long as the sand is of the right consistency and depth around them. Also, the sand mustn’t be so dry it just runs through your fingers, nor so wet that it just falls apart when you try to build something of any height. It may dry out, in which case it could be very good, but very fine sand will never hold together unless it is constantly kept wet. So rain can be beneficial if you are sufficiently determined/obsessed/significantly unhinged/wearing a wet-suit.

The way to test this, having found a promising beach or what maybe the only beach at your disposal, is to dig a test shovel-full and see: 1. How well it holds together when you squeeze it, and: 2. How deep the sand goes. In other words, if it’s too shallow with just grit or rock a few inches below, you will have a much tougher job on your hands.

Some might not think that Borth, just above Aberystwyth in Wales, has a lot to offer when set against some more exotic seaside resorts. You’d be wrong on several accounts but most of all it has, or did have, the most wonderful sand. Perfect for sandcastles. And should you get bored, you can always head up to Ynyslas Dunes which are a haven for such as Marsh Helleborines, Epipactus palustris and other elusive glories of the natural sea-shore world.

Secondly – The Tools.

You have to have proper garden spades, assuming there are those amongst you of a size and capability to wield them. Not too heavy to break your back over the course of the day, nor too light or blunt not to be able to dig deep and carry a decent load. So make sure you put them in the boot or on the roof when you leave for your Summer seaside holiday.

Then enough smaller, seaside spades in sizes to suit the diggers concerned. Very importantly, these should be made of metal – except for under 5 year-olds, who are safer with plastic – and be both of the pointy and flat-bottomed variety. It’s nice if they’re brightly coloured but you can tell the real pros by the fact that all or most of the paint has worn off by now. A bit like a muddy, dented old Land Rover is a lot more classy than a shiny new one.

Buckets are good for the under-4s to play with but not much else if you want to avoid the Tommy Cooper fez-look to your castle. But smaller, sharper tools can be useful for the finer detail – if you don’t lose them as I or a small child usually does. If so, just use a small metal spade instead.

By the way, the reason I stipulate metal for spades is that plastic literally doesn’t cut it. It can, however, avoid the occasional wound, which is why you can’t find them these days except in out-of-the-way, somewhat downtrodden resorts. These are, of course, the best, and, if you’re lucky, they still have metal spades and nets that don’t fall apart and other late-lamented, old-fashioned seaside goodies gathering dust in a corner of some off-season shop somewhere .

Thirdly – The Design

It helps to have an idea of what you want your castle to look like from the outset as you will need to draw an outline, allowing for significant digging space within it, around the shape and/or area where you want to dig.

Should you want to use a nicely shaped and sized rock to lean your castle against and create even more spectacular heights, towers and, why not go for broke, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on the rock itself – then plan around the rock. If you’re lucky, what you have built will still be there the following day. An added benefit of the rock approach is that it often lends itself to a bridge or tunnel under where the castle abuts on to the rock, which will naturally fill with water as the tide rises and potentially flow around the whole castle in your carefully crafted moat – for as long as the structure holds.

Talking of structure, it can sometimes help to use flat stones to support the more ambitious kind of tunnel at base level ie resting on the flat area of un-dug sand underneath the whole edifice of the thing. Some might call it cheating but not in my book.

And choose a style. It might be Gothic, Baroque, Palladian, or ancient Roman or Greek for that matter. Or, more adventurously, for those advocates of the avant-garde, a hint of Gaudi or even Gehry, if you know Barcelona and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, for example. Let alone Le Corbusier, whose church at Ronchamp in France had a huge impact on me when I visited it in my late teens.

But don’t get too hung up on it. You might love the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor, the houses of Sir John Vanburgh or the Vitruvian principles adhered to by Inigo Jones – the last two being great exponents of the theatrical arts, let alone architecture – but you might never have heard of them, let alone be prissy about it. And when it comes down to it, who cares anyway if you’re having fun doing it. 

Just a quick thought though, the slightly ruined or 18th century folly look can come in quite handy, following the example of the perhaps the greatest exponent of the art, William Beckford. His construction of the 300 foot high Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire with James Wyatt in the early 1800s is famous for the fact that it lasted precisely 12 years after he’d built it before collapsing into a pile of rubble. So you can always say that your castle has been dedicated to the great, if foolish, Mr.B, in anticipation that it might come to a similar fate.

A suggestion though of a given style adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the construction, don’t you think? Well I do anyway. 

Like the occasion when a gentleman passed by on Bigbury Sands in Devon and commented: “Ah, the Great Ziggurat of Ur, if I’m not mistaken,” as he surveyed our elaborate construction we had spent the whole day creating between us. He explained that he was a Classics don at Oxford University and had actually been to Tell el-Muqqayar in the Dhi Qar province of Iraq where the great Ziggurat had been constructed around 2,500 BC and that our sandcastle had brought back the memory of that visit. Distinguished academic or not, it was his smile that stayed with me. The smile not of a dusty academic but a delighted child, the one that lies just under the surface of all our so-called sophistications. Or so you would hope.

So while the Golden Mean, as played out architecturally in the Golden Ratio or Section, may be an aspiration, something that has a natural balance, a harmony of form, whether Pharaoic, Arthurian, Bauhaus or Dali-esque – if it looks okay, that’s good enough for me. And there’s no harm in mixing styles either – a pyramid here, a barbican there, a Roman temple nearby, a Bridge of Sighs across the moat – anything goes… As long as it somehow holds together as one mad, wonderful creation.

But back to: Fourthly – The Construction

It’s all about mass, volume and packing it down. The hard work is all up front. Hence the garden spades.

Having made your outline, you then need to roll up your sleeves and get digging. And keep digging until you have more than you think you’ll need after packing it down and before starting the carving process. For something of any scale, you need a pile of not far from your own height. And I’m six foot tall. So maybe not necessarily the full six feet high but a substantial pile nonetheless.

What works in your favour, as soon as you start carving, or cutting away, is that you get more sand to put on top or to put in the place earmarked for your gatehouse or your watch tower on the rock or whatever else you may have in mind other than the central keep and defensive outer wall.

My preference in my later years, perhaps influenced by more children around to both help and hinder the process, is to make something that, essentially, they can get into. As, in inside of. 

Which is all the more reason to pack it down, not just by hitting it, or patting it half-heartedly with your spade, but really getting stuck in with your hands, and feet if necessary. Put some oomph into it and PACK IT DOWN!

You can’t easily get inside a Giza-type pyramid as you’d have to hollow it out from within. This carries a significant risk of losing a child underneath should it collapse. Not popular with the parent concerned. Unless that’s you, of course, in which case it helps to have a partner to hand to throw a bucket of cold sea water over you when you get too carried away.

So the good old mediaeval model of the outer curtain walls around a central keep with towers and turrets at the corners serves very well and can still allow for twiddly bits to keep your desire for a bit of classical or other reference happy. It’s also fairly quick, once you’ve made your pile, in that the hollowing out process allows for small children to help with the bonus of low risk of any damage to child or castle in this pre-carving stage.

Now I have to admit a weakness for doorways. Call them gateways, gatehouses, barbicans or what have you. Or just an archway into the interior of the castle. But there is one stipulation You have to be able to get through it.

Agreed, it’s a lot easier for a three year-old grandchild to get through a gateway made of sand than a six foot tall granpa and sometimes you have to cut your losses. But if it’s properly constructed – and there are ways of digging below the surface of the base level of sand to help with this – you should be able to manage at least up to a 12 year-old and potentially more, given a modicum of agility and relative skinniness. But it really is the icing on the cake when it comes to the triumphal moment of entry. You just need to be careful to keep your head and your bum down otherwise… Well, you know what happened to the Walls of Jericho.

Carving itself is perhaps the most satisfying part of the craft of sandcastle making. So – what is it? And how do you do it?

Firstly, you need good, well-packed sand that’s not too dry and not too wet. Then you need a good spade. Proper garden variety for the big stuff – the walls, the towers, the outer part of the gatehouse. Smaller for the more fiddly stuff like the inside of the gatehouse, windows, door-frames, decorative touches in general. And then you just cut vertically down, allowing for a bit of sloping as you get towards the bottom to avoid the risk of any kind of overhang which will create an inevitable Beckford. But it is the cutting which gives you the edge, the clean ‘proper castle’ look, when compared to the heaps of sand elsewhere on the beach. For crenellations though, the best things I know are fingers.

You put one hand up against the bit of wall you want to crenellate, back of the hand up close against it with an inch of sand poking up above it, and then gently but firmly press down with one finger at close, regular intervals. Hey presto! And it’s Windsor Castle – or near enough anyway.

Talking of Windsor Castle, I remember driving past on the M4 that fateful day when centuries of royal junketings nearly did a Jericho. Smoke and flames pouring out the top of the towers – how there weren’t more crashes from those like me passing by I really don’t know. Anyway, it survived and those crenellations still proudly survey the humble hovels of the executive classes for miles around.

Lastly – The Team

Now when I use the term ‘team’, I really mean the herd of cats or kittens that the determined overseer-cum-architect-cum-obsessed granpa attempts to engage in the process.

Apart from endangering the finer points of rococo decoration, the main structure, however well packed, is still always vulnerable to a shove by a determined 5 year-old or that irresistible urge to scramble up to the top of the tower you have just spent an hour or more tempting it up to a needle-fine point.

So there needs to be clear direction at the start, which can be variably bossy or irascible, depending on how well watered was the evening before round the holiday cottage table. Followed by subtle persuasion with a level of ownership given to the artisan concerned to put their own stamp on things, be it sea-shells around the edges, clumps of seaweed draped over the top or a few bits of variously attractive driftwood stuck in at random “to stop the invaders taking over the castle, Granpa”. This needs to be accepted with due, if grudging, grace or risk tantrums, tears and the laying down of tools.

One way or another though, we get there, with any luck, just before the tide, which has been sneaking back up all the while, suddenly pours its boiling, lace-capped contents all round the moat. 

This the moment when the Oliver Cromwells of this earth applaud from their vantage point with the gods and watch the sea do what took them a lot of cannon-balls and siege engines over several weeks, months or years to do, in a matter of minutes.

And we, the Team, stand and watch while all our hard work crumbles around us – not because, as Winston Churchill commented: “The man who stands firm in order to protect a sandcastle can never be relied upon – for he has given away his common sense” – but because it is part of the ritual. It is the Way of Things. And to do it honour, we must salute it as it subsides beneath the waters, with no protection or resistance, however much we might wish it. Only then can we leave the beach to its own devices, knowing, with a glow in our hearts that it is done.

Although a sandcastle, in other ways, is never done. It can never be finished, never be perfect. This is partly through the limits set by the tide and the times of day but also, like the finest Isfahan carpets, hand-made by generations of the greatest craftsmen in the cradle of civilisation, the ancient land of Persia, to be perfect is to insult the deity. Not, to be frank, that there’s any chance of that

No, better far to build with love and see the joy in the child’s eye, hear the voices and the laughter tell high-flown tales of derring-do and, all the while, the power and the glory of the sea sweeps back and forth in the endless cycle of birth, death, rebirth and re-death which we are privileged to know for one hour of eternity, one palmful of infinity. 

And as we tumble, aching, sun-sore, tired but happy, happy, into our beds, still with little worlds of sand embedded between our toes, who better than Dylan Thomas in his A Prospect of the Sea to chant us to our dreams that night: 

“down the tide of the sun on to the grey and chanting shore where the birds from Noah's ark glide by with bushes in their mouths, and tomorrow and tomorrow tower over the cracked sand-castles.”