Tom Sharpe

Thanks so much to the packed crowd who came out to see the premiere of the latest iteration of "A Curious Thing- The Story of Mary Anning." You rocked, and we would not be able to do what we do without you! ❤️

See you on the weekend! BOOK NOW at... linktr.ee/TheseCurious...

#PostboxSaturday post office Blanchland, Northumberland

A bleak landscape with grey clouds, a large rock on left labelled ‘England’ with a flagpole with St George’s Cross blowing in the wind.

Entering a strange and foreign land. What untold wonders and mysteries lie beyond?

Close up of a handwritten label on a fossil specimen: 'This Fossil is the first I ever obtained. It was purchased from Mary Anning in July 1824. It then wanted the point of the nose. This was found 3 years after rolled on the sands & she sent it to me to Oxford – Enniskillen'

#FossilFriday: A curator's dream label. Doesn't get much better than this: 'This Fossil is the first I ever obtained. It was purchased from Mary Anning in July 1824. It then wanted the point of the nose. This was found 3 years after rolled on the sands & she sent it to me to Oxford – Enniskillen'

Title page pf a book, 'A Natural History of the Crinoidea, or Lily-Shape Animals' by J.S. Miller, 1821.

A plate from Miller's 1821 book showing part of the stem and arms of the Jurassic crinoid Pentacrinites briareus.

26 February 1779, Danzig, Prussia: birth of palaeontologist & curator Johann Samuel Müller. In 1801 he settled in Bristol after missing his ship to the US, adopted the name Miller, collected fossil crinoids & in 1821 defined the Class Crinoidea. He gave a copy of his book to #MaryAnning in 1824.

I’m sure they’ll unwrap it for you if you ask nicely! It’s well worth a look.

I’m being uncharacteristically diplomatic. I sympathise with the problem St Michaels clearly had. And maybe there was little option.

Just in the last couple of years, I think. I first saw the kitchen units there in 2024. It's still the parish church, but I guess they need fewer pews these days and there's more demand for refreshment facilities, sadly. I understand that such facilities are needed, but in front of such a window?

But when I was last there I was saddened and disappointed to see how the church interior has been altered with seemingly little regard for the significance of this particular window which is sought out by countless visitors who come to Lyme on the trail of Mary Anning.

Interior view of a stained glass window in a church, with pews in the foreground and monuments on the wall.

In February 1850 a William Wailes stained glass window of the Six Acts of Mercy from St Matthew's Gospel was installed in St Michael's Church, Lyme Regis in memory of #MaryAnning by the vicar and her friends at the Geological Society. It recognises both her contribution to geology and her charity.

Purple and orange skies at dawn over a rounded hill.

Eye-catching dawn over the rounded laccolithic lump of Traprain Law in East Lothian this morning.

You're very welcome. I loved the poem, its premise and all its references. Both Lyme and Hunstanton are places I know well. It's great to see Mary Anning featuring. She seems to have been fond of poetry herself.

All good wishes to @heapsgood.bsky.social and the cast of 'A Curious Thing' for their opening on Wednesday night at the Adelaide Fringe where the lucky folks in the audience will meet not one, not two, but three Mary Annings! Great to hear tickets are going fast.

Lovely geologically-themed poem here, traversing the Chalk from Lyme to Hunstanton, with more than a nod to #MaryAnning.

Annotated sketch by George Cumberland of a skeleton of Plesiosaurus showing its long neck, small head and four paddle-like limbs, and emphasising a scatter of vertebrae at the base of the neck.

About 24 February 1824 Bristol fossil collector George Cumberland sent his drawing (copied from one by #MaryAnning) of Plesiosaurus to Charles Konig at the British Museum asking if he thought the bones all belonged to one animal. Konig had seen the fossil and replied that it was 'perfectly genuine'.

Less than 10 tickets remain for opening night this Wednesday! Get on it, folks!

Always like to stock up on my all-too-rare visits to Lyme!

Photograph of labels on a wine bottle (left) from Lyme Bay Winery; a beer bottle (centre) from the Cerne Abbas Brewery with its yellow label showing the Cerne Abbas Giant and a wine bottle (right) from Furleigh Estate in Dorset with an ammonite on the label.

Bit of a Dorset theme in this week's bottle recycling.

A large blue-covered book called STRATA on a shelf in a bookshop.

Had a wander into Waterstones on Edinburgh’s Princes Street today. Good to see ‘STRATA William Smith’s Geological Maps’ on display. Published by @thamesandhudson.bsky.social it’s a great compendium of Smith’s work, his maps, sections, fossils and archive, with a stonking 811 illustrations.

Large, tall room with a domed ceiling with stars above a long table with tall lamps.

Had call to pop in to a bank branch that I hadn’t been in before. Not a bad interior. But then it was in Edinburgh’s New Town.

First show, “The Dinosaur Hunters” has premiered, and the all ages audience loved it! 🩷💙💚

Book here below if your in Adelaide and looking for something amazing for your young humans during the @adlfrin.ge

www.gluttony.net.au/shows/the-di...

Photograph of a large country house across lawns and bare trees with a setting sun behind.

From this afternoon’s walk: Robert Adams’ Gosford House, East Lothian, one of his last commissions, completed in 1800 after his death.

It was at that same memorable meeting of the Geological Society on 20 February 1824 that William Buckland described Megalosaurus; this got a lot of attention in 2024, but 200 years earlier it was #MaryAnning 's strange Plesiosaurus and its long neck that everyone wanted to hear about.

Top, title of the published paper 'On the discovery of an almost perfect specimen of the Plesiosaurus by the Rev. W.D. Conybeare'; right, portrait of Conybeare; left, centre, the later published plate of the specimen showing is unexpectedly long neck; left, bottom, extract from a book by Gideon Mantell 'The specimen... was discovered and developed by the late Mary Anning, of Lyme Regis and purchased by the late Duke of Buckingham for (I believe) 105£ [it was £110]. I had the pleasure of being present when Mr Conybeare read the Memoir at the meeting if the Geological Society in Bedford Street, Covent Garden; the specimen was placed in the vestibule at the entrance, for want of room' [actually it was too big and too heavy to carry upstairs].

20 February 1824: William Conybeare reads his much-anticipated paper on #MaryAnning 's complete Plesiosaurus to a packed meeting of the Geological Society. Gideon Mantell recalled that the specimen was in the hallway. It was too big & heavy to carry up the narrow staircase to the meeting room.

'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Clouds lit up by the rising sun over a landscape of low hills.

Lammermuir dawn, 17 February 2026

A large woodland sculpture of a hare painted with flowers on a white background

Photograph of a dark rock with large pale/coloured crystals.

A hare-raising encounter on yesterday’s walk and on today’s a more prosaic meeting with a porphyritc basalt of the Early Carboniferous East Linton Lava Member of the Garleton Hills Volcanic Formation.

Ink sketch of a minor eruption within the crater of Vesuvius in 1829, a view looking down into the crater within which a small cone is erupting.

15 February 1829: Visiting the Bay of Naples, Lyme Regis geologist Henry De la Beche, a friend of #MaryAnning, observes and sketches a minor eruption within the summit crater of Vesuvius.

Left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, holding a hammer and with a basket over her arm; top right, extract of a letter from Anning to Buckland 'I have this day just sent of the drawing to Baron Cuvier – I hardly know whether I wish him to purchase it or not it is such a uniq one to be sent out of the Country however I can’t help it'; bottom right, her sketch of her fossil fish sent to Adam Sedgwick a year later.

15 February 1830: #MaryAnning tells William Buckland that she's sent a sketch of a strange fossil fish to Cuvier in Paris, but would prefer it to remain in England: 'I hardly know whether I wish him to purchase it or not it is such a uniq one to be sent out of the Country however I can’t help it'.

Old mill building with conical red pan tiled roof beyond a millpond in the foreground, blue sky above.

Snowdrops along a wooded riverbank.

Bare trees and frosted slopes along a country lane, illuminated by weak sunlight in a grey sky.

Frosted moss on an old stone wall, with patches of yesterday’s snow.

A day of two halves, today. Crisp, cold sunny morning, grey, snow-threatening clouds this afternoon. But one of the few days of 2026 without rain.