THE MARY ANNING WING: PROGESS REPORT from Our Director, David Tucker
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MUSEUM FRIEND Newsletter for the Friends of Lyme Regis Philpot Museum Issue no. 29 January 2017 Registered charity number 278774 THE MARY ANNING WING: PROGESS REPORT from our Director, David Tucker So far, even with delays caused by the town centre being closed for a week in September, and technical troubles with piling eight metres into the ground, we are on schedule! The site now looks like a large Meccano set, as like many modern buildings it is being constructed around a steel frame. A flight of stairs is in place and the first floor’s metal layer (onto which the concrete floor is poured) is in place. This meant that after donning the safety gear – and overcoming my fear of heights – I walked out onto the first floor of the Mary Anning Wing. When one walks out to the seaward side of the first floor meeting room, the view is spectacular. A loo with a view….. Our architect has pointed out that the best view (eastwards) will actually be visible from the new toilet. Current plan is to allow volunteers access to the new first floor as soon as possible now that Christmas is over and 2017 is well and truly under way. ************************** What will the Mary Anning Wing look like? It will stand on the Museum’s terrace on the seaward side of the building. However, it will look very different as it will be built of zinc and glass. Traditionalists may well have a problem with that, but zinc is in fact an ideal material for coastal locations – it doesn’t slowly dissolve like the local limestone, nor does it rust as it has no iron content. Our zinc will be the colour of the “blue lias”, the local stone visible in the cliffs that dominate Lyme Regis. And glass? Well, we want to ensure that as many people as possible enjoy our fantastic view of Lyme Bay. 1 OUR LITERARY DINNER The Friends were delighted to welcome novelist Tracy Chevalier as guest of honour at their Literary Dinner, held in October as part of the Lyme Regis Arts Festival. Tracy is a long-standing supporter of the Museum and like Sir David Attenborough is a Patron of The Friends. Outside of Lyme Regis she is probably best known for her novel “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, inspired by the famous Vermeer painting. More than five million copies have been sold world-wide, and it has been translated into eighteen languages, as well as being made into a hugely successful film. Dinner guests were curious to understand the thought processes which took her from 17th century Amsterdam to fossil hunting on West Dorset beaches! Nor did she let them down, keeping her audience enthralled as she explained how Mary Anning’s portrait in the County Museum roused her curiosity as to how someone of such humble origins went on to become the greatest fossil hunter who ever lived. There followed two years of intensive research leading to the production of her novel, “Remarkable Creatures” with Mary Anning as one of the two central characters. No wonder it has been said of Tracy that she makes history come alive! In her book she was generous in acknowledging the help she had received from many people in and around our Museum, none more so than Paddy Howe, “fossil hunter extraordinaire, who gave me many fossils and took me to the beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth to find more, teaching me with patience, intelligence and grace”. She was delighted, therefore, when Paddy presented her with a very special fossil! It looked much like an ordinary stone of the kind to be found on the beach any day - until it was opened up to reveal numerous fossils inside, small but beautifully formed More than £1100 was raised for Friends’ funds on this extraordinarily happy occasion, made possible by Tracy’s continuing and generous support. 2 A VISIT TO THE MET OFFICE A Grand Day Out! A small party of Museum Friends enjoyed a tour of the Met Office last September. The Exeter site was custom built in attractive grounds and comprises a main thoroughfare known as ‘The Street’ with working pods on both sides and a restaurant. We were split into two groups for tours of the building and, separately, the library. The Library, with Anne Shotton as our guide. The first mention of the ‘National Meteorological Library’ was in 1870. It was originally based in London; moved to Bracknell in 1962 and then to its present site in Exeter in 2003. This public library is open on weekdays as a reference and lending library. One wall of the library houses an historical ‘Time Line’, starting with Vice Admiral Fitzroy and the first weather forecasts. Fitzroy was, of course, Captain of HMS Beagle on Darwin’s famed voyage. Beneath the Time Line there is a copy of the first daily weather forecast for the general public, published in 1861 in the Times on the 1st August. A display on ocean weather ships describes how observations were made in the North Atlantic to assist our convoys in WW2 but the operation was abandoned after two ships were sunk and many lives lost. After the war the British Ocean Weather Service was inaugurated on 31st July, 1947. However, the impact of satellites, together with advances in drifting buoy technology, led to the phasing out of the service and the final observation was made in May 1996. Popular with visitors is a facility to look up the weather on one’s birth date! Continuing the wartime theme, pride of place goes to a framed copy of the D-Day weather chart for Operation Overlord. The invasion was scheduled to take place on 5th June, 1944 but Met Office forecaster, James Stagg, advised Eisenhower that the weather would be too bad. Forecasters then received observations from a ship in the Atlantic indicating a ridge of high pressure developing which 3 could provide a brief break in the weather and so the decision was made to attack on the 6th June. The rest is history! On display are models of aircraft used over the years by the Met Office Research Flight, some of the aircraft having supported WW2 air operations. Today the Met Office works in collaboration with the National Environmental Research Council to provide data for the entire UK atmospheric research community. In preparation for our visit, Anne produced various items of interest, including an article describing an extreme weather event in Dorset, with headlines such as, ‘Soggy Day in Dorset’. On 19th July, 1955 eleven inches of rain fell on Martinstown, near Dorchester, during a period of nine hours, a UK record at that time and causing severe flooding. It was thought to be due to a ‘Spanish Plume’, in which hot, humid, air is drawn northwards from Southern Spain, producing severe instability when it meets cooler Atlantic air and giving rise to concentrated rainfall. The Main Building Our tour of the main building was conducted by our host for the day, Ben Brooks. The Met Office was formerly under the Ministry of Defence but now comes under the ‘Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’. Such is progress! Ben told us that there were 1,700 employees based in Exeter. Ben explained the operations taking place in the various hubs which include a business section responsible for weather-based contracts throughout the world. There is also an education and training centre used for both internal staff training and for external groups. Most interesting was to peer into the Operations Centre; a large space divided into sections, each operator with a computer desk. The chief forecaster for today’s weather has a central space and nearby are the forecasters responsible for the next few days. The 3- day forecast is now as accurate as the old one-day forecast. Other sections include flood defence, providing forecasts to fire services and local government and forecasts for airlines and shipping. A business section provides forecasts to supermarkets, for example, 4 enabling them to predict peaks in demand for weather-dependent products such as salads, BBQs, suntan lotion etc. Winter forecasts are provided to local councils to allow decisions to be made regarding the gritting of roads. A space forecast centre monitors electromagnetic radiation from the sun and solar flares. In 1859 there was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm which caused telegraph systems to fail all over Europe and N. America. It is known as the Carrington Effect after the English astronomer who observed and recorded it. A solar storm of this magnitude today would likely cause widespread technology problems. A Hazard Centre was set up following the Chernobyl disaster to predict the likely wind-based spread of radioactive debris. More pertinent to us, our local authorities were alerted during the recent Lyme Regis cinema fire, providing guidance on staying indoors with closed windows for those downwind of the toxic smoke. Other forecasters monitor the jet stream, providing a high altitude forecast for airlines. By quizzing Ben we learnt that monitoring devices in the nose cones of commercial airliners produce large volumes of weather data; that satellites monitor ocean waves to estimate wind strength and improve the modelling of forecasts; that operations staff do 12 hour shifts with a 1.5 hour break. Accurate forecasting depends on the ability to process vast amounts of data to produce the forecast models. We visited the computer room and learnt that a new super-computer will soon be available and will be the world’s biggest; for about a couple of weeks, according to Ben! Our final port of call was the outside weather station comprising an array of rainfall, wind speed, sunshine and temperature measuring devices, many of which are experimental and undergoing assessment.