These black and white images show Tim Parsons’ mother and her family on a beach in the Isle of Wight, UK, in 1948. But how did they make those extraordinary sand castles? There are no molds around. They were created with a device Tim’s great grandfather Henry Ingham designed. He was the chief engineer at a spinning mill in Leigh in Lancashire, in the north of England and made the device in his spare time for use on family holidays. In 2011 Tim discovered the object via pictures in an old photo album and decided to re-make it, designing a new set of blades based on the profiles of concentric buildings and other pure geometries. The tool consists of a wooden dowel that goes through the center of the sand pile, a disc that sits on top of the sand pile and a collar that attaches the dowel to a blade that cuts a profile into the sand. It’s a sand version of the ceramic process known as “jollying”. We are currently working on re-creating the Sandcastle Maker for today’s budding sand architects.