History of Cherryburn and Thomas Bewick

The Master Engraver

His parents recognised that Thomas was more suited to the arts than farming or mine management, and so, at 14 years old, they apprenticed him to Ralph Beilby (1744–1817),  a talented young engraver with a business in Newcastle. Bewick had to learn a wide range of skills, from cutting the letters on door and coffin plates, or family crests on silverware, to the engravings for printing bank notes, shop bills and cards.

Thomas became famous for his ability to engrave boxwood. In the 1760s this was an old and unfashionable medium, referred to as ‘woodcutting’ and generally considered coarser work than fine engraving on metal. New techniques were emerging which challenged this perception, and Bewick developed them to perfection. He used fine tools to cut the end-grain of the wood and varied the depth of his cutting to create shading in the finished print. His wood engravings were subtle and lively in a way not seen before.

In 1790, Bewick published the first of his major works – A General History of Quadrupeds. This showcased his ground-breaking depictions of animals, drawn from locally available specimens and, sometimes less successfully, from depictions by other artists.

A History of British Birds (Land Birds) followed in 1797 and A History of British Birds (Water Birds) in 1804. These two books were rich with detail from Bewick’s own observations and the narrative is enlivened by his long experience of the Northumbrian countryside. They transformed how the natural world was described, bringing Bewick fame in his own lifetime and beyond. The book even appeared in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

In addition to the main illustrations, Bewick filled the pages of his books with ‘tale-pieces’. These tiny engravings often captured Bewick’s critical observation of injustices such as the enclosure of land, or the plight of wounded soldiers. Others wittily drew attention to human foibles, such as the man wading through a river to avoid a toll bridge, only to lose his hat to the water.

Finally, in 1818, Bewick published The Fables of Aesop and Others. This fulfilled his desire to provide illustrations which would appeal to children better than the crude examples he had encountered in his own childhood.

As a prolific and skilled engraver, Thomas Bewick left us countless other examples of his craft. He provided illustrations for other authors, including an engraved version of the emblem of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade to illustrate the 1781 pamphlet The Princess of Zanfara. In 1812 he engraved a version of the emblem onto a silver tea urn for presentation to the former plantation manager and Abolitionist, Zachary Macaulay (1768–1838).

 

The Family Home

Although Bewick lived and worked in Newcastle, Cherryburn remained the family home. As an apprentice and young man, Thomas visited weekly, walking along the Tyne to visit his parents. This habit only ended in 1785, the year in which Thomas lost first his mother, Jane and then his sister, Hannah, and finally his father, John.

Bewick had two younger brothers. John Bewick (1760–95), also a talented artist, learned his craft from Thomas before setting up in London. He became a respected wood engraver and illustrator but died relatively young. The youngest brother, William (1762–1833), continued to live at Cherryburn and manage the mines.

Around 1820, William Bewick constructed a new house at Cherryburn and partially demolished the old cottage. The Georgian, stone-built house rises to two storeys and would have offered considerably more space to the widowed William and the expanding family of his son, Ralph. Ralph lived at Cherryburn with his wife Elizabeth, with whom he went on to have a dozen children. Ralph’s daughter, Margaret Guthrie (b. 1818) also lived there, as did William’s sixth eldest child, the unmarried Joseph Bewick.  

Thomas lived long enough to know of William’s improvements at Cherryburn and several of his nephews worked in engraving and printing. Thomas’ nephew, John Bewick (1790–1809) had learned from him as an apprentice, as had Thomas’s own son Robert Elliot Bewick (1788–1849). The family connections to the area remained strong, and when Thomas died in 1828, he was returned to nearby Ovingham for burial alongside his parents. His daughter, Jane, planted walnut trees at Cherryburn in remembrance of her father.

 

Preserving The Legacy

The last of the Bewick family to live at Cherryburn was Ralph John Bewick (1872–1956), the great-grandson of Thomas Bewick’s brother, William. When he died the place passed out of the Bewick family for the first time in over two hundred years.

In 1987 the Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust (TBBT) formed, its aim to open Cherryburn to the public and share the life and work of this remarkable artist. In 1990, they passed ownership of Cherryburn to the National Trust. The old TBBT re-formed as the Bewick Society to promote the lives of brothers Thomas and John Bewick.

Today, many of Thomas Bewick’s original boxwood printing blocks for Quadrupeds, Birds and Fables are on display at Cherryburn. Remarkably, the little smallholding above the bank of the Tyne is still recognisably the eight acres Thomas’ father first leased almost three centuries ago.

Further reading

Bain, Iain, The workshop of Thomas Bewick: a pictorial survey, Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979.

Bewick, Thomas and Bain, Iain (ed.), A memoir of Thomas Bewick written by himself: edited with an introduction by Iain Bain, London, OUP, 1975.

Uglow, Jenny, Nature’s engraver: a life of Thomas Bewick, London, Faber and Faber, 2006.

The Bewick Society, Bewick Society