Chapter 10.

(version 4, January 2026)

Mike Horne’s memories of some Hull Geological Society meetings.

I think that the first Hull Geological Society meeting I attended was a field trip to Melton Bottoms Quarry led by Felix Whitham when I was an undergraduate student. It was a joint meeting with the Harker Geological Society (for Hull University students) and it was very muddy in the clay pit!

It was a couple of years after graduating that I joined the Hull Geological Society and started attending meetings. Some of these stand out in my memory.

There was one indoor meeting when there was a lecture about ‘Tunnelling in Ancient Rome’ where the lecturer showed a lot of black and white projector slides of tunnels under ancient Rome. The guest speaker got to the end of the 80 slide carousel and there was almost a collective sigh of relief from the audience, followed by a groan when he asked for the “next carousel please”! The Secretary Ken Fenton gave a vote of thanks to the speaker in which he said it was the best HGS lecture he had attended all Winter; he was being honest because in reality he had missed the other five due to work commitments teaching a biology night class!

I remember a field trip to the Holderness Coast using public transport one autumn. There were just two of us, myself and Ken Fenton, who led the trip. We travelled by train to Bridlington Station and walked down the coast to Hornsea. Ken was an excellent communicator and passed on his knowledge of the Quaternary geology. At the time there was a nudist beach at Fraisthorpe and there were some nudists huddled under the cliff slowly turning blue; we chose not to disturb them. At Hornsea we went for a pint in a pub before catching the bus back to Hull.

Another field trip was to Hawsker Bottoms. There is a very steep cliff there and the route down is a zig-zag path better suited to mountain goats. Not many people or geologists go there. Ken Fenton found a superb Ichthyosaur skull in a large block on the beach, it was too good to leave for the sea to erode away. Lynden Emery had brought a large frame rucksack, so we lashed the specimen to the frame of the rucksack and pushed him back up the cliff. Later I arranged for the specimen to be trimmed using the large rock saw at the University. I do wonder what became of the specimen and assume that it is now a treasured possession of Ken’s family.

My first indoor meeting as Secretary to the Society will always stick in my mind [10^th October 1985]. It was more than a bit hectic. Sheila Rogers was the President and had given Vice President Ken Fenton a lift to the University, but she could not stay for the meeting herself. I set out a display of rocks from my holiday in Jersey. I also set up some polarising microscopes for Roy Thackeray, who had been making thin sections of the Exeter Volcanics, but he did not actually show up. I dropped my box of projector slides and had to hurriedly rearrange them (in the correct order, upside down and back to front of course) before I gave a talk. I ducked out of reading the minutes by asking Ken to read them for me (as a dyslexic I have never been a fan of reading aloud). After the meeting, as I packed away the microscopes, I noticed through the window some blue flashing lights outside. Next morning I learnt that Ken had passed away in his sleep. He had been having heart problems and had refused to get into the ambulance that had been called for him.

One amazing meeting was the Rock and Fossil Roadshow that we held in the Ferens Art Gallery. I just love the venue and liked the way that we were displaying the natural art of crystals and fossils amongst the paintings and statues in such a grand setting. More recently we have held annual Roadshows at Hornsea Museum which were frequently organised by Stuart Jones. That is a really friendly venue and our Roadshow is right on the main street, so Saturday shoppers stop to have a look and some then bring specimens along for identification in the afternoon. Displays of specimens by Jack and Brenda Almond and Stuart became a regular feature of the Roadshows. Stuart’s sister Bronwen and her husband Chris provided catering for the Roadshows at Flamborough Village Hall and kindly donated any profits to Society funds. Experienced members of the HGS act as “experts” on the “Finds Desk” offering to identify specimens that visitors bring in.

Then there was the time that we invited Eric Robinson from the Geologists’ Association in London to speak at an open meeting in the Grammar School Museum in Hull on a weekday lunchtime. There were not many people in the audience and so, even though he had never really visited Hull before, Eric decided not to give his prepared lecture but to go for an urban geology walk instead. After about an hour there were about two dozen afternoon shoppers following him around looking at the shop fronts and buildings. When the impromptu walk ended they were all able to identify Ancaster Stone because of its ‘streaky bacon’ texture.

Some of the longer meetings we have held stand out as impressive achievements by our society of amateur scientists such as the Centenary Meeting in 1988 and the 125^th Anniversary, when all the speakers were members of the Society. Ted Wright correcting Willy at the Centenary Meeting during his lecture from the back of the lecture theatre by shouting out “I think you’ve got that wrong brother” was a special moment.

We did have one successful weekend field trip. I had made friends with John Barry and Paul Whittlesea in Norfolk and they arranged for the Geological Society of Norfolk to host a weekend field meeting for the HGS. I hired a car for the week and my family stayed in a cottage at Kelling with Felix Whitham. Felix insisted on bringing his pressure cooker with him. David Hill parked his camper van on the drive and ran a cable through the kitchen window for electricity. Judith Bryce stayed with her partner in Norwich. I learnt a lot that weekend and have liked the geology of north Norfolk ever since.

The Geology and Art projects in 2014 were fascinating. Previously London based poet Michael McKimm had collaborated with me, Stuart Jones and my night class students, writing poems about our fieldwork in his book Fossil Sunshine published in 2013. Four members of the Society collaborated with five local artists and Michael McKimm, leading to the publication of a booklet, a display in an art gallery in Humber Street and a conference at Hull College. Fine artist and HGS member Anna Kirk-Smith created works of art representing the four geologists for the display. I still have the decorated hard hat that she gave me afterwards. I still think that it would have been fascinating to have a field trip and workshop to compare and contrast how artists and geologists view and interpret the landscape, particularly on the coast. The Facebook page called “On the Endless Here” (Verdi et al. 2014) created for the event still exists and attracts new ‘likes’ from visitors.

From the outset of the Centenary Chalk Project, I was concerned about correlating the biostratigraphy of the Chalk of the Northern Province with the biozones used in the south. The zonal indicator fossils used in the north were established as northern equivalents of the southern zones although some are not easy to find and identify. Moreover, the zones have never been scientifically defined using a biostratigraphic event at the base rather than by lithostratigraphy (bad scientific practice). My hope was that we could properly define the zones and perhaps erect our own zonation based on local fossil species. We did not achieve this and Felix Whitham published the Project Group’s research without defining the biozones. With this in mind I proposed the holding of a joint Chalk Symposium with the YGS in 2015 to spend a weekend discussing this problem and jointly propose how to solve the biostratigraphy issue (Horne 2015). Whilst it was a pleasant meeting and was a great opportunity for the Chalk workers from the south and north to meet, regretfully the original aims of the meeting were not achieved.

I remember two field meetings because they were too popular. In both cases local newspapers had reacted to our press releases by writing feature articles. Over 200 people turned up to one of our public seaside walks at Mappleton, meaning that the leaders were late because there was very little parking in the village. Luckily there were several experienced geologists from the Society present so rather than lead a walk we gave a generalised talk about the ice ages carrying glacial erratics to Holderness and then positioned ourselves about 100m apart along the beach individually and asked the members of the public to bring us specimens for identification. A ‘Stones and Bones’ walk in Hull’s General Cemetery that I co-led with local historian Chris Ketchell attracted over a hundred interested members of the public. We had to split the party into two and led separate walks in a figure of eight shape, swapping the groups half way through. I remember asking some children to go ahead of me to find some interesting stones for me to talk about and that seemed to keep their interest. I did feel bad when I saw the trampled plants that we left in our wake.

I am so grateful to the members of the Society who willingly share their local expertise and enthusiasm for our Science. In particular I benefited from the help of Lynden Emery who introduced me to the Speeton Clay, Ken Fenton who shared his knowledge of the Middle Jurassic plants of the Yorkshire coast and the Quaternary of the Holderness coast, Felix Whitham with his attention to the details of Chalk lithostratigraphy, and Ron Harrison’s enthusiasm for erratics and urban geology. It is a privilege to have been able to pass on their wisdom and understanding to a new generation of local geologists.

The Society’s meetings have changed a bit from my early days as a member; for instance we now have PowerPoint rather than slide projectors and a blackboard. Following the Covid pandemic we now hold a “blended” programme that includes online meetings and social media which enable distant members to participate in our events from the comfort of their homes. John Connor’s lectures to the Society from California over the last 4 years have been a really enjoyable addition to our Programmes. The HGS is still composed of a friendly bunch of enthusiastic people with a common interest in rocks, fossils and minerals. Long may it flourish!

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