Programme of Events
Black Country Geological Society’s indoor meetings will be held during the winter months at the Abbey Room at the Dudley Archives, Tipton Road, Dudley, DY1 4SQ.
Unless otherwise stated, the Abbey Room and Zoom meetings will normally open at 7.30pm and lectures commence at 8.00pm.
Those wishing to attend field or geoconservation meetings please contact our Field Secretary (email address on the Contacts page).
Any non-members wishing to attend our virtual meetings should contact our Meetings Secretary for instructions (email address on the Contacts page).
Other contact details are also available on our Contact us page.
Updated 14 April 2024.
Members please check your email for any last minute changes.
Recordings of some of our virtual talks can be found on our YouTube channel.
Events in September–October 2023
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18 September (1 event)
The life and work of Sir Arthur Russell
The life and work of Sir Arthur Russell 7.30 -
Monday 18 September (Indoor Meeting): 'The life and work of Sir Arthur Russell'. Speaker: Roy Starkey.
To the mineralogist and mineral collector Sir Arthur Russell needs little introduction. The honorific ‘Sir’ is not a knighthood for public service but the result of him becoming the 6th Baronet Russell of Swallowfield in Berkshire, a hereditary title created for his great-grandfather Sir Henry Russell (1751–1836). One might be forgiven for imagining that his family background would have bestowed upon him a comfortable lifestyle, but the reality was rather different. He was by nature a frugal person with the common touch, equally at home with miners and quarrymen as he was with the mine owners and landowners that paid their wages. This talk, which draws upon more than four years’ research for a recently published book, will provide an overview of Arthur’s family background, his contributions to the study of British mineralogy and the wonderful specimens contained within his collection.
Arthur was undoubtedly drawn to the beauty and wonder of natural objects. He collected minerals himself, acquired specimens from miners and made a remarkably thorough job of tracing and purchasing old collections. As a consequence, through his wonderful collection of minerals, we can travel back in time to places that are no longer accessible, and via the associated historical connections with earlier collectors, gain a sense of the value attributed to crystals and mineral specimens 250 years ago.
Largely self-taught, and with no formal scientific qualifications, he rose to become President of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland and was awarded several prestigious medals for his work in mineralogy. He rubbed shoulders and forged relationships with many famous mineralogists and was a valued consultant to the mineral industries.
The story of how his collection came to be at the Natural History Museum in London is a tortuous one. Minerals were his life and the talk will celebrate the diversity of colour and form, of chemistry and structure, and the rich geological and mining heritage of these small islands that Sir Arthur was proud to call his home.
Click here for a Google map of the location.
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16 October (1 event)
Indoor Meeting - 'Erratic Tales'
Indoor Meeting - 'Erratic Tales' 7.30 -
Monday 16 October (Indoor Meeting): 'Erratic Tales'. Speaker: Ian Fairchild, University of Birmingham and Herefordshire & Worcestershire Earth Heritage Trust (HWEHT).
I will start the lecture by giving some examples of erratic boulders in the UK, Iceland and the Alps which provide us with interest and instruction about geological processes.
Over the past two years, the Black Country Geological Society has partnered with the HWEHT, the Birmingham Open Spaces Forum and the Lapworth Museum of Geology to deliver the Heritage Lottery Funded project “Birmingham’s Glacial Erratics: Heritage of the Ice Age”. The legacy of this project includes much better documentation and visibility of these boulders in SW Birmingham and NE Worcestershire, the creation of eight walking and cycling trails, a programme of public engagement events, and a website erraticsproject.org which includes some marvellous essays on the historical study of the erratics by Julie Schroder. The nature of these stones, through their exotic nature and sometimes impressively large size makes them attractive to the public and a means to foster pride in the local area. There is scope for further projects in other geographic areas to build on this interest.
The Birmingham boulders are distinctive in having a provenance from North Wales and originating in one or more older ice ages, notably including the Anglian around 450,000 years ago. Most boulders are composed of siliceous volcanic ash representing the product of pyroclastic flows following explosive eruptions. The most recent glaciation (the Devensian) led to ice advance as far as Wolverhampton, but Birmingham was untouched. The Devensian erratic suite in the West Midlands, by contrast, is dominated by granites from SW Scotland and the Lake District. These deductions were made in the 19th century, prior to urbanization, during an intensive period of mapping the position of boulders stimulated by the Erratic Blocks Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Essentially trains of boulders pointed back to the source. The map of Macintosh (1879) covered an enormous area and established that the white Criffel Granite and the pink Eskadale Granite as sources, whilst showing a distinctive train of volcanic boulders from the Arenig massif of North Wales which a model of the Welsh Ice shows was underneath the crest of the ice sheet. At the time the apparent crossing of flowlines on the map was a source of confusion, but it arises from the different ice ages, the Welsh Ice being relatively thinner and hence slower moving in the Devensian. Martin (1890) showed much more detail of the Midlands area whereas the posthumous map of Harmer (1928) covers the area to the north and east of the Midlands. It would not be possible to do such work today, since our urban areas are now swamped with boulders imported for decoration, including glacial erratics, but which have no heritage value.
The original enthusiasm for documenting boulders and mapping glacial flowlines barely survived WWI. The Birmingham geological memoir barely mentions them, yet they are the most widespread evidence for deep time processes visible to the public and remain of considerable scientific significance.
Click here for a Google map of the location.
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