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Journal article
Somerset ichthyosaurs and Quaker philanthropy: Alfred Gillett, William Stephens Clark and the geological museum in the Crispin Hall, Street.
In 1885, William Stephens Clark (1839-1925) built and opened the Crispin Hall in the village of Street, Somerset, to house its Working Men's Club & Institute. The new complex provided a room for a geological museum set up by Clark's cousin Alfred Gillett (1814-1904), and formally opened in 1887 with...Taylor, Michael A
Crispin Hall, Street, William Stephens Clark , Geological Museum, Quaker philanthropy, museology, ichthyosaurs , social improvement, C. & J. Clark Ltd, and Alfred Gillett
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Magazine article
Bringing Hugh Miller's The Old Red Sandstone to a new generation of readers
The 2023 edition of The Old Red Sandstone is the first truly new one for a century. It is in two main parts: a facsimile reprint of Miller’s original first edition of 1841, with explanatory notes added, and a book-length ‘Critical Study’ of Miller’s work by the authors Ralph O’Connor...Taylor, Michael A
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Magazine article
Captain Waring and the Great House on Broad Street
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
The geological and historical milieu of an ornamental cephalopod limestone (‘orthoceratite limestone’, Ordovician, Sweden) used in the Clerk Mausoleum (1684), St Mungo's Kirkyard, Penicuik, Scotland
A slab of cephalopod limestone bears a dedicatory Latin inscription on the mausoleum built around 1684 by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1649–1722) for his wife Elizabeth Henderson (1658–83) at St Mungo's Church, Penicuik, near Edinburgh, Scotland. The stone is identified on sedimentological and palaeontological evidence and historical context as... -
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Journal article
The Life of Mary Anning, Fossil Collector of Lyme Regis: a Contemporary Biographical Memoir by George Roberts
Despite the modern celebrity of the fossil collector Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme Regis and her frequent use as an icon in scientific education and popularization, there are few accounts of her life by her contemporaries. We report here a previously unpublished anonymous manuscript memoir of Anning's life, in the...Taylor, Michael A ; Benton, Michael J
George Roberts, Lyme Regis, Athenæum, and Mary Anning obituary
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Journal article
Science in a Somerset Quaker community: Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) fossil collecting and kinship networks in and around Street
Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) was a son of John Gillett, a Langport shopkeeper, and his wife Martha, part of a complex network of families which formed the core of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in eastern and south-eastern Somerset. He went into trade as an ironmonger. In 1841 he became...Taylor, Michael A ; Berry , Charlotte
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Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
The unusual printing and publishing arrangements of Hugh Miller (1802–1856)
John Johnstone was an Edinburgh printer and publisher, from 1849 in partnership with Robert Hunter. In 1839, Johnstone and the printer Robert Fairly established a separate firm, Johnstone & Fairly, to publish the Witness, a newspaper edited by the geologist Hugh Miller. The firm became Miller & Fairly in 1844...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Dating the publication of Hugh Miller’s The testimony of the rocks (1857)
Assessing the precise publication dates of nineteenth-century books is difficult. Common problems include inadequate, inaccurate and confusing title-page information, and misleading advertisements. It is better to use multiple lines of evidence rather than a single source. The first Scottish and English edition of The testimony of the rocks, by Hugh...Taylor, Michael A ; O’Connor, R ; Overstreet, L K
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Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller.
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, and the Great Storm of 1824
During the Great Storm of 1824, the house and fossil shop of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, in Cockmoil Square, was supposedly flooded. The popular but physically unlikely story is probably based on misreading Anning's report of flooding in her brother Joseph's premises, and copying a tale...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Sea dragons of Avalon
Tourists driving through the village2 of Street on their way to Glastonbury might well wonder at the representation of a skeleton on the road sign. Could this perhaps be a warning that this stretch of the A39 is a roadkill hotspot? I (Stig Walsh, once a local inhabitant) suspect that...Walsh, Stig A ; Taylor, Michael A
Street, ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, Somerset, Triassic, and Jurassic
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Journal article
200 years of West Country sea dragons: Thomas Hawkins and his fossil legacy
Public lectures and seminar, Street, 22-24 July 2010Taylor, Michael A ; Noè, L. F. ; Hill, David B
ichthyosaur, Jurassic, Triassic, and plesiosaur
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Journal article
The first known stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage and the building of the Hugh Miller Monument, Cromarty, 1859
Two early stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage at Cromarty have separate provenances and their original photographer is unknown, but they were apparently taken at the same session and from almost the same location. One shows the Hugh Miller Monument under construction. The monument's planning, funding and building are outlined. It...Taylor, Michael A ; Morrison-Low, A D
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Journal article
Guide to the Hugh Miller collection in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, c. 1920
Around 1920, the retired Geological Survey worker Benjamin Neeve Peach (1842-1926) wrote a guide to the permanent exhibition, which he had just completed, of fossils from the collection of Hugh Miller (1802-1856) in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh (now part of National Museums Scotland). This guide also incorporated an older...Peach, Benjamin N ; Traquair, Ramsay H ; Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
The appeal circular for the purchase of Hugh Miller's collection, 1858
This reproduces, in facsimile, the only known copy of the Proposal to Purchase the Museum of the Late Hugh Miller for deposition in the Natural History Museum (later part of the National Museums Scotland). It is datable on internal evidence to 1858. This particular copy belonged to Charles W. Peach...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
The museums of a local, national and supranational hero: Hugh Miller's collections over the decades
Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Palaeontological site conservation and the professional collector
Professional (i.e. commercial) fossil collectors can and do use sites responsibly. They benefit palaeontology by finding new fossils. Control of this collecting is counterproductive on eroding coasts and new exposures opened up by such collectors. Irresponsible professional collectors are not a major cause of damage compared to other collectors, quarry...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Hugh Miller (1802-1856): the loss of his papers.
Michael Taylor and Lyall Anderson have been considering the fate of Hugh Miller’s manuscripts as part of a wider study of his collections.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Hugh Miller (1802-1856): ephemera and museum visit reports sought
Michael Taylor and Lyall Anderson are writing an account of the dispersal, curation, and display of the collections of Hugh Miller.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Hugh Miller (1802-1856): the catalogue of his fossil collection
Michael Taylor) and Lyall Anderson write: we have observed that one of the specimen numbering systems applied to Miller’s fossil collection was started while the collection was still in family hands – though we are not certain whether this was before his death.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
A memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896)
A manuscript memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor, is attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896). It is published here, apparently for the first time. It was written sometime in 1881–1896, more probably 1882–1895. Its intended place of publication is discussed. It is an interesting...Taylor, Michael A
nineteenth century, Scotland, Cromarty, biography, and Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage and Museum
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Journal article
An integrated approach to understanding the role of the long neck in plesiosaurs
The evolution and function of the long neck in plesiosaurs, and how the problems associated with stiffness or flexibility were overcome during feeding, or rapid swimming during predator avoidance, are explored, and a new interpretation for the function of the plesiosaur neck is presented. Based on the anatomy of the...Noè, Leslie F ; Taylor, Michael A ; Gómez-Pérez, Marcela
palaeoecology, Plesiosauria, evolution, filter feeding, long neck, functional anatomy, and Sauropterygia
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Journal article
Hugh Miller: fossils, landscape and literary geology
The bicentenary of the birth of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) in Cromarty (in northern Scotland) has enabled a reappraisal of this fine spare-time geologist, in turn stonemason and banker, and eventually Edinburgh newspaper editor. In Cromarty he had the usual advantages and limitations of a local collector far from metropolitan centres....Knell, Simon J. ; Taylor, Michael A
Old Red sandstone, Jurassic, Hugh Miller, Museums, Literary geology, Fossil collecting, History of vertebrate paleontology, Devonian, and History of geology
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Journal article
‘Where is the damned collection?’ Charles Davies Sherborn’s listing of named natural science collections and its successors. In: Michel E. (Ed) Anchoring Biodiversity Information: from Sherborn to the 21st century and beyond
C. D. Sherborn published in 1940, under the imprint of Cambridge University Press but at his own expense, Where is the – Collection? This idiosyncratic listing of named natural science collections, and their fates, was useful, but incomplete, and uneven in its accuracy. It is argued that those defects were...Taylor, Michael A
museum, biology, Charles Davies Sherborn, taxonomy, collections, and geology
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Journal article
The anatomy of Stratesaurus (Reptilia, Plesiosauria) from the lowermost Jurassic of Somerset, United Kingdom
We provide a complete description of one of the oldest plesiosaurians, Stratesaurus taylori from the earliest Hettangian of the United Kingdom. At least 25 apomorphies distinguish S. taylori from the sympatric Thalassiodracon hawkinsii, to which all three specimens of S. taylori were originally referred. Several features of the skull of...Benson, Roger B J ; Evans, Mike ; Taylor, Michael A
digital data, phenotype, visualization, functional analysis, three-dimensional models, and computed tomography
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Journal article
An anonymous account of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, England, published in Chamber's Journal in 1857, and its attribution to Frank Buckland (1826-1880), George Roberts (c.1804-1860) and William Buckland (1784-1856)
The authors of an anonymous article on Mary Anning (1799–1847), published in Chambers’s journal in 1857, are identified to allow the article to be fully evaluated for the first time. Payment was made to the natural-history writer Frank Buckland (1826–1880). However, he incorporated much material from the books of his...Taylor, Michael A ; Torrens, H. S.
history of science, history of geology, nineteenth century, historiography., and history of palaeontology
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Journal article
Three memoirs of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) by his son Hugh Miller FGS
Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896) wrote a set of three memoirs on his father Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor. The first two are successive versions of a text written about 1883 to accompanya portrait of the elder Miller by the pioneering photographers David Octavius Hill (1802–1870)and RobertAdamson(1821–1848).The second...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Hugh Miller's collection - a memorial to a great geological Scot
Some would argue that Hugh Miller's greatest memorial lies in his writings and his enduring reputation. Nevertheless, as well as the Nelson's Column style monument overlooking his birthplace cottage preserved by the National Trust for Scotland at Cromarty, he also enjoys four other statues or portrait busts. Appropriately for an...Taylor, Michael A ; Gostwick, M
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Journal article
Further information on the life of Charles Moore (1815-1881), Somerset geologist.
Copp et al. (1999) published an account of the life and work of Charles Moore, the Victorian amateur geologist whose fine collection is now held mainly by the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the Somerset County Museum, Taunton. This note aims to amend and extend some information in...Torrens, H. S. ; Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Charles W. Peach, palaeobotany and Scotland
The move south from Wick to the city of Edinburgh in 1865, some four years after retirement from the Customs service, provided Charles W. Peach with new opportunities for fossil-collecting and scientific networking. Here he renewed and maintained his interest in natural history and made significant palaeobotanical collections from the...Anderson, Lyall I ; Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Tennyson and the geologists part 2: saurians and the Isle of Wight
It is often observed that Tennyson’s poetry was profoundly influenced by his reading in astronomy, geology and science in general, and evolutionary thought before and after Darwin. This reflected the period’s intense crossover between science and what would today be called literature. The scientific paper was approaching its modern format,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Mary Anning (1799-1847) and the photograph The Geologists ascribed to William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)
A photograph of 1843, titled The Geologists, has recently been suggested to portray Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, and Henry De la Beche of the Geological Survey. This, and another of the same outcrop, were taken about 1843 at Chudleigh, Devon, almost certainly by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). The...Taylor, Michael A ; Levitt, S
William Henry Fox Talbot, Devon., Astley Cooper, Henry De la Beche, Mary Anning, geological work, and photograph