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Two hundred years ago …

Friday 18th February 2022 Here be hyenas After a flurry of activity in the latter part of 1821, little seems to be happening in the Kirkdale Cave in the early months of 1822. Probably, the cave had by now been …

Posted - 20/02/2022 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 21st January 2022 A time to take stock According to my Sunday newspaper’s magazine supplement, the New Year is a time to pause and take stock of our lives.  For those of us busy with a financial year end …

Posted - 23/01/2022 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 17th December 2021 20 years ago … No, the title isn’t a misprint!  The Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s bicentenary coincides with a milestone of my own: twenty years as its Clerk. My first day in the Lodge was 18th December …

Posted - 20/12/2021 | Read more

Two hundred years ago …

Friday 10th December 2021 In the news In early December, the Kirkdale cave became widely known to the public, with an article in the Yorkshire Gazette. This mentioned, in passing, that the collections “were of such an extent as to …

Posted - 10/12/2021 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 26th November 2021 Shelter from the storm Our November newsletter, just issued, contains a report from Steve Williams of York Museums Trust about his plans to make the Museum Gardens more welcoming for wildlife with, for example, hedgehog-sized holes …

Posted - 28/11/2021 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 12th November 2021 Mind the gap! The old back door of the Lodge, opening into the kitchen, doesn’t fit exactly and there is a gap of an inch or so at the bottom which allows access to the building …

Posted - 13/11/2021 | Read more

Two hundred years ago …

Friday 5th November 2021 … at the speed of a stagecoach Most significantly, word spread to the Rev. William Buckland, Reader in Geology and Mineralogy at Oxford, and a key figure in the subsequent history of the Kirkdale fossils. Buckland …

Posted - 6/11/2021 | Read more

Two hundred years ago …

Friday 29th October 2021 Word starts to spread … Following the discovery of the Kirkdale Cave and its contents in July 1821, word rapidly spread. Fairly soon practically everyone in Yorkshire with an interest in such things seems to have …

Posted - 30/10/2021 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 22nd October 2021 Buzz! The autumn influx of spiders continues, but summer saw an interesting encounter with some other small neighbours.  It began with a buzzing in the fireplace.  This fireplace has been out of use and blocked up …

Posted - 23/10/2021 | Read more

The Clerk in the Country

Friday 15th October 2021 … and then there were none! At just after 9 am on Sunday 10th October a great crashing rumble shook the house and rattled the windows.  It lasted for several seconds and ended as suddenly as …

Posted - 16/10/2021 | Read more