This little watercolour has been with us for quite some time now, one of those gentle works on paper that sits patiently on the wall, neither demanding attention nor giving up its secrets too easily. Works like this tend to reveal themselves slowly. They wait for the right question.

In this case, the question arrived more than once:

“Where Exactly Is Mallevy, Merioneth?”

The title, carefully preserved on the reverse, clearly reads 'Mallevy' and the scene feels unmistakably Welsh. Yet no such place appears on any map of Wales.

So we undertook a little detective work...

What followed was fascinating and led us to a lost bridge, a misread village name, and a link back to one of the fathers of English watercolour.

Discovering Mallwyd

The breakthrough came when we realised that Mallevy was almost certainly a misreading or mis-transcription of Mallwyd, a village in historic Merionethshire. The shift from -wyd to -evy is surprisingly common in 19th-century handwritten script, where the curls and loops of penmanship can easily confound a later eye. 

And Mallwyd, importantly, fits the topography: The River Dyfi running through a shallow gorge, stone crossings, pale distant hills, all the visual clues in Munn’s watercolour. But which bridge was this?

Pont Minllyn, the famous 17th-century packhorse bridge nearby, has two arches, not one. Our watercolour clearly depicts a single span. The engravings we found from the early 19th century also show a single span. 

Then the real discovery appeared.

The Lost Mallwyd Bridge

Via a photograph at the People's Collection Wales, taken during the 1930s, titled simply Mallwyd Bridge, we discovered a match for ours. Built in the 1770s, Mallwyd Bridge replaced earlier rope-and-timber structures and stood until it was replaced sometime in the late 20th century.

One of the engravings, referred to earlier, also depicts this single-arched stone bridge at Mallwyd, confirming that multiple artists recorded it before it vanished. 

Why The Distant Hills Differ

One remaining question was why the watercolour’s distant hills don’t perfectly match the surviving topography of Mallwyd. That answer lies in the artistic thinking of the time.

Paul Sandby Munn belonged to the wider Sandby circle; his grandfather was Paul Sandby RA, often referred to as the father of English watercolour. Sandby’s teachings, and the broader Picturesque movement, encouraged artists to blend truth with artistic refinement.

William Gilpin famously advised painters to "soften a hill here, heighten one there" to improve the composition. And Uvedale Price argued that landscape painting was a process of “selecting and combining” elements to achieve harmony rather than literal accuracy. Even Constable described this balance as "choosing the truth of the eye rather than the exactness of the map".

In practice, foreground structures, such as bridges, mills, and cottages, were faithfully recorded, while the distant view was 'poetically' adjusted, 

With this new information brought to light, this charming little piece has a new lease of life. It's become a record of a vanished crossing and a testament to the poetic spirit of this unsung watercolourist.

View the painting: Paul Sandby Munn RWS, Mallwyd, Merioneth, North Wales.