Here's Hull Maritime volunteer, Julie Corbett who visited the Museum of Coastal Heritage and Geology.
As a Hull and East Yorkshire volunteer I was fortunate to receive a Northern Museums Volunteers pass last year. It can be used for one year. The latest place I visited was in Scarborough: The Rotunda – the Museum of Coastal Heritage and Geology (website).
My pass was recognised instantly. Both the welcome and building was warm. It was a freezing day.
There are areas and activities for children throughout the museum. Disappointingly none of the dinosaur onesies came in my size.
The museum opened in 1829. It was one of the first purpose-built museums in the country. The building design of Richard Hey Sharpe which was influenced by William Smith (1769 - 1839). William Smith had moved to the Scarborough area in the 1820. He received the Wollaston Medal in1831 for his pioneering work showing that geological strata could be shown and correlated using the fossils they hold. Adam Sedgewick (president of the Geological Society of London) referred to him then as the ‘father of English geology.’
The first-floor gallery space is bright and walking round the wall cabinets is like following chapters in a book. The frieze around the dome is a geological cross-section based on work by the geologist John Philips (1800 – 1874), John was William’s nephew.
I travelled by train to Scarborough and fields outside Scarborough had a snow covering so these snowshoes caught my attention. In the catalogue for this display cabinet was an intriguing entry.
Of course, I imagined the snowshoes on the buffalo rather than the hunters wearing them.
I love fossil ammonites. I often visit the beaches on the Holderness coast in the hope I find a dinosaur. I have not yet but looking at the exhibits here suggests the possibility always exists.
