This is the story of William Smith, the development of geology and the first geological map. 26/10/2023
1815 A map delineation of the strata of England Wales and parts of Scotland by William Smith culminated in the work of Darwin who developed the theory of evolution. . This map was one of the great projects that can be compared to the creation of the Oxford Dictionary, Manhattan Project and solving the Human Genome. William Smith imagined the underside of the whole country.
1769 to 1839.He was the orphaned son of the village blacksmith from Churchill Oxfordshire yet soon after the map was made he was in financial ruin. This was a consequence of his being working class. Eventually he was acknowledged as the founding father of the new science of Geology.
1819 in London alone there were 20 debtors' prisons and he was in Southwark.
1650 James Isshuir the Irish Prelat declared that the world had been born at 9am. Monday morning October 4004BC This dogma was accepted when Smith started his work. The origin of the planet and mankind was accepted as incomplete and divinely inspired. Now Smith's discoveries triggered a collision between religious belief and scientific method and led to Charles Darwin theories.
Watt received the patent for his steam engine as well as Josiah Wedgewood potting and Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning frame. There was a mania for canal building brought on by the coal and iron industry.
1755 Samuel Johnson's great dictionary came out.
1787 the Enclosure Act was passed so that farming methods improved at an extreme rate but with industrialization Britain could no longer feed herself..
Oxfordshire pound stones this was a deep sea fossil that dairymaids used. Smith saw these and it was realized that they had been living creatures.
1759 The Duke of Bridgewater built a canal of 42 miles from his mine to the Mersey, reducing the cost of his coal by 50%. . A single horse putting a barge could pull 80 times the weight of a horse pulling a cart.
1792 South Welsh coal developed and could float to Bristol . Smith worked in the geology of the coal mines and the canals and saw that the pattern of rocks was always the same from top to bottom. Noting the fossils he found in the different strata and he could predict that there was a universal phenomenon. He was first employed as a surveyor on the Somerset Coal Canal to get coal out of Wales. From what he saw above ground he could predict what was underground. The science of Stratigraphy was born. Fossil collecting had become a fashion and many gentlemen of leisure went into it. As the beds go up we first see primitive creatures, higher up they are more developed. This system worked all over the nation and so did the rest of the world. Thus one could predict what rocks were to be found, others were using these ideas and proving them correct.
1799William Smith was fired from the Somerset coal Company. This was a job that paid him 450 pounds per year. After this he would never have full time employment. He had contract jobs and looked to build canals on beds of impermeable rocks . He came into demand by farmers, who needed help to drain swamplands. At the same time Smith travelled the whole country to map it geologically.
Thomas Coke of Holkham took over running his estate and breeding better pigs.
John Farey became Smith's first apprentice .
Benjamin Richardson warned Smith that if he did not publish his ideas others would steal them. so a book called Accurate Definition of Strata was to be published by John Debrettte whose company went broke in 1802. So Smith's book was not published. Debretts Book of Peerage was first published in 1769.
Jurassic Oolites are rocks ideal for sculptors Other Jurassic sandstones are ideal for building. Stonefield slate, Here the rock is exposed by removing the pemble that covers it. The first frost of the season caused the slate to shatter apart for quarrying, otherwise it is covered till next year. Smith's map took 14 years to complete. He had the reputation of wandering the country with scholarship and brio and his nickname was Strata. The Geological Society were snobs and did not accept him or Farey, a farmer's son, as members..
1778 Sir Joseph Banks was one of his supporters. Banks was the one who encouraged the Bounty Expedition of Captain William Bligh to Tahiti and the first to bring the mango to England..
1807 Smith bought an old quarry in Combe to work oolite limestone but the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo followed with a recession and this cut demand for building and he went bankrupt.
1815 400 copies of the map were printed today there are about 40 still in existence.. It took till 1865 till the Geological Society finally made amends and recognized that all the work and credit belonged to Smith.
The London Natural History Museum in Kensington London has more than 9 million fossils.
Debtors Prison, this was meant to be a deterrent . Men of means signed bills .Those for whom they signed knew that they could land in prison if the bill was unpaid. These prisons were usually populated by middle classes.. Despite his reputation he was penniless , homeless and out of work.
1817 William Fitten helped Smith get his reputation back. The Scarborough philosophical Society finances the paleontology of Yorkshire and build the City Museum there which Smith designed showing the progress of fossil development.
1920 Smith finally became a member of the Geographical Society with the help of William Vernon
.1831 Smith received the Wollaston medal as the father of English Geology given at the Oxford Sheldonian theatre. King William IV granted Smith a pension of 110 pounds a year. This pension also covered his wife when he died in 1839 and was buried in St. Peters Church ,Northampton . All Geological maps are based on his work.
John Carey published maps from 1783 and was commissioned by the Postmaster General to publish maps of British Roads. 1805 he produced the ordnance survey. He collaborated with Smith who drew his maps on Careys maps.
Charles Lyell a Scottish geologist published his major books called "Principles of Geology" between 1830 and 1833
Geological Time
65 million years ago. Death of the dinosaurs
140 Cretaceous.
201 Jurassic south coast east of Cornwall
245 Triassic
290 Permian lifeless rocks
360 Carboniferous coal a period of thick rainforests
420 Devonian From Devon age of fishes.
440 Silurian
500 Ordovician part of Wales.
540 Cambrian means Wales
---------------------------------------------
The Salt path by Raynor Winn 2018 274pg 3/4/25
Walking in Cornwall.
This is the authors first book. The Salt Path usually starts from Poole , Lulworth, Weymouth, Lyme Regis, Sidmouth, Dawlish, Warren, Brixham, Salcombe, Plymouth , Podruan, Gorran Haven, Fulmouth, Kynance Cove, Penzance, Land's End. Then heads northwards St. Ives, Newquay, Padstow, Tinagel, Bude , Hartland, Westward Ho, Combe Martin, Minehead.
Ray's husband Moth was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration CBD. he had pains in his shoulder and was given a drug Pregabalin that helped for pain but turned him into a bit of a zombie. They had made a bad investment with a friend who went bankrupt and they were shareholders and lost they farm and home.
1381 the first statute against begging came with the Peasants Revolt. 1547 the saw the dissolution of monasteries. The Industrial Revolution brought about the Enclosures Acts and more homelessness.
1744 Vagrancy Act, categorized beggars, vagabonds, idle and rogues. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars homeless numbers increased again. This resulted in the Vagrancy Act of 1824.
2014 Antisocial Behaviors Crime and Policing Act to do with Public Space Disorders Act. There is a wide spread belief that homeless are alcoholics, drug takers and suffering from mental health issues.
They started at Minehead and had an income of £48 per week. They could stay in private camping sites where hot water and showers were available but that cost £5 per person per night, they did this at times to wash and clean up.
Sleeping in a tent rough they always had dog walker early in the morning around.
The Coast Path had been establish by the Coast Guard so they could see every cove and bay against smugglers. In 1978 the last section of this was completed in Devon. Westward Ho! was named after a novel by Charles Kingsley 1855 about English pirates. They ran out of Pregabalin and Moth felt pain and cold turkey and they were thinking of going back when after 4 days he recovered felt the pain badly but became lucid again.
Clovelly is a privately owned village and the Hamlyn family rent out the homes to tenants farmers.
Greenham Common. American nuclear warheads were stored here and in 1983 there were protests against this.
Robert Steven Hawker a parson who worried about the burials of shipwrecked sailors and was a poet . He build a hut in a cove in Morewentow and it is now owned by the National Trust.
Doc Martin was a fictional series filmed at at Port Isaac. They met South African but especially Australian surfers hired as Life Guards at Harlyn Bay or working on roadsides cutting the brush. They came for the summer and were surfing when not on duty.
Project Neptune owns a lot of the coast and is supposed to protect it from the ocean.
Bernard Leach 1920 set up a pottery training at St. Ives where his museum is today.
In season there are lots of blackberries here but you have to eat them just before the get overripe otherwise they are sour. By carrying his heavy load and marching the trail Moth was able to lose weight and had become healthy later when it got colder his muscles became too stiff and painful. Activity and keeping his mind alert was his fight against his illness.
Greevor was a tin mine till 1991 when it closed and without pumps the sea filled it to sea level. The miners spread as far as Australia, others worked building the Channel Tunnel. The Cornish Mining World Heritage site became a tourist attraction. At lands End a Heinze Baked Beans label is can be seen as they bought the cape for the National Trust in 1987 .
John le Carre (ne David Cornwall)1931 to 2020 Le Carré lived in St. Buryan Cornwall, for more than 40 years; he owned a mile of cliff near Land' End. The house, Tregiffian Cottage.
1981 Christmas. The cargo ship Union Star on her maiden voyage when her engines failed. In this storm the life boat William Brown recued 4 people and disappeared both vessels and crews drowned, thus 8 of the town and 8 of the crew . The town of Mousehole had reporters for weeks after that and was in world press.
Fulmouth University next to Pendinnis Castle which was build in 1540 by Henry VIII.
North of St Austell is the land of the china clay pits of kaolin, this also led to vast mine dumps around the quarry. Thousand of tons of clay were moved out and shipped off from Charlestown harbour.
Charlestown is a picturesque harbor with tall ships, became know by the TV series Poldark.
Menabilly Estate was the place that Daphne du Maurier rented a house and dreamt of Mandalay and Rebecca.
During winter her friend Polly invited them to stay in a small cottage that had been a barn and Moth a trained plasterer completed the walls. He however found that this work was very painful on his arms and shoulders. Polly came to her and told her that the shearing team needed a fleece packer. As the fleece is shorn she would take it and fold it into a bag. They travelled around to the farms of the area some big and some small family places. She earned £15000 for the season but Polly now had a sheep shearer who was a potential paying tenant for the shed.
At the start of summer they came to Poole. The World Heritage Site runs from Orcombe Point to Exmouth for 92 miles. This is the Jurassic coast and in this area the erosion has exposed rocks with 185 million years of history, through the Triassic , Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
There are people here who want to return the forest to the indigenous heath as described by Thomas Hardy (1840 to 1928) in the Woodlanders.
Chisel beach is not a beach but a 15 meter high and 18 mile long barrier or a tombolo (Italian for pillow) The pebbles are fist size in Portland but grape size in West bay.
2007 the Napoli ran into trouble and a mile off listed and dropped her containers and scavengers came to look for the motorbikes, perfumes and wines that came off many said they were volunteering to clean up this ecological disaster.
They were offered a small flat in Polrun and Moth received a student loan to study as he could not work physically while Ray became a writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment