published 1988
In order to put into clearer perspective the critical phase in the history of the Society when its further existence seemed at one stage more than doubtful, a brief description of how things were when I first became a member is necessary. This was in August 1945 when, because of wartime difficulties, indoor meetings were held at 2-15pm on Saturday afternoons in a room at the rear of Wilberforce House. I was invited to address the Society that same winter on the subject of glacial meltwater channels in the Yorkshire Wolds. Not surprisingly the attendance was small, but it included some members from Lincolnshire, notably Mr T.B. Parks, a builder from Ulceby. I suppose the Society's use of that curiously welcoming, booklined room, which impressed me as being extraordinarily well suited to be the Society's meeting place was a legacy from Mr Thomas Sheppard's curatorship of the Hull museums and his membership of the Society.
Mr C.P.F. Shilllto was President then, a venerable figure in his middle seventies who was clerk of works to the Earl of Yarborough and his estates at Brocklesby, and acted in this capacity until he was 78. He was immensely knowledgeable about Lincolnshire geology and an exquisitely skilful draughtsman, and his beautiful copperplate hand writing made his letters a joy to receive. His Presidential Address that year was a detailed account of the successions revealed by boreholes in the Lincolnshire Wolds, a subject in which he was the expert and which he illustrated with finely detailed drawings. Mr Shillito retired a year or two later and I became his much less distinguished successor.
An arrangement with the Hull Public Libraries that they should accommodate the Society's library did not long outlast Mr Sheppard's influence, and much of it was moved to the room of the Deputy Water Engineer at the Water Department, Mr Green, another stalwart member of the Society who served it as Secretary for many years. His assistant, Mr C.W. Mason, for many years the Society's excursions secretary, was an indefatigable photographer, who on the hottest days of summer would appear warmly clad in good thick tweed jacket and breeches, boots and leggings, carrying a plate camera and tripod and a heavy box of glass plates, roll film not providing a sufficiently true optical plane to satisfy him. During the winter he would bring to meetings an equally heavy carbon arc projector and screen, together with a heavy box of glass 3¼" by 3¼" slides.
Before long, the room in Wilberforce House was no longer available to us and the Society met in a much barer room in the Church Institute in Albion Street. Although the Society gained a few members, notably Ken Fenton, it was gradually dwindling in numbers and its members were ageing. It was approaching a condition when it was hardly bigger than its committee. The establishment of a Department of Geology at what was still then the University College of Hull in 1948 was an encouraging development, holding promise for the future, and its first member of staff, Geoffrey Bond, addressed the Society in the winter 1948-9 on 'Some aspects of the geology of Southern Rhodesia'. He had however fallen in love with Africa, and after only one year in Hull returned there to pursue a distinguished geological and academic career until his death there a few years ago. He was succeeded by Lewis Penny who one year later was joined by John Neale.
Nevertheless, at this stage the Society was still declining in numbers and ageing in membership. I remember vividly a field meeting at Barmston, being at the rear of the party, and watching apprehensively as our group of elderly near-sighted, earnestly geological gentlemen, headed by Mr Mason burdened by his camera, tripod and box of plates, in crossing a field passed under the very nose of an astonished bull, he evidently too taken aback to be aggressive and they completely unaware of the company they had been courting so closely.
The unexpected death in 1953 of Mr Green, who had been the Secretary throughout the whole of my association with the Society was a severe loss. I, having completed five years as President, succeeded him as Secretary, and Mr Wilson, hitherto our Treasurer, became President of the Society as well.
A full programme of activities was continued for a few more years but with increasing difficulty until, at the meeting in December 1957, at which Lewis Penny spoke on 'Fossil Mammals and Pleistocene Stratigraphy' to an audience of about 30, it was ominously reported that that was the first meeting of that winter session, the two previous meetings having been cancelled on account of members' illness and the likelihood of there being no audience for the speaker. At the next meeting the following February there were only six members present. Thus was reached the lowest ebb of the Society's fortunes. It seemed hardly worthwhile to arrange further meetings for which no attendance could be assured. At the same time, the Society was suffering the strange but bearable embarrassment of having been greatly enriched by generous bequests from the estate of Mr Shillito who had died in 1951.
At this time also, I had become Secretary to the Yorkshire Geological Society, the flourishing condition of which made the office a demanding one, and made it very difficult to find opportunity to try to restore the Hull Society to similar health.
It was through Ken Fenton's interest in and concern for the Society and the encouragement of Mr John Bartlett then curator of the Hull Museums that an extraordinary meeting was convened on 4 February, 1961 at the Mason's home in Park Avenue to discuss the future of the Society. Ken was elected to the chair, John Bartlett argued resolutely for the continuance of the Society, and as a result further meetings were arranged to consider rules, membership, finance and activities and the success of these arrangements was demonstrated by a resumption of a full programme of meetings the following October, at which attendances began to reach about 40. This very satisfactory state of affairs having been reached, I ceased to be Secretary in March 1962, having been continuously in office as President and Secretary since 1948, and, very properly, Ken continued to preside over the meetings of the Society whose rebirth was so very largely due to him. His further greater services to the Society have already been recorded by pens much better able to do it than I could.
copyright Hull Geological Society 2021