Zoom performance: Tuesday 14th December
Originally A Zoom performance / talk, Tuesday 14th December 2021 (postponed from 7th December because of Storm Barra), now available as a recorded webinar, price €6 for the online shop HERE
How did their friendship grow? An opportunity to live through a moment in time and a slice of two lives, through their letters.
In the summer of 1811 the friendship between Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey, Bantry Bay, West Cork, Ireland, and fellow botanist, Dawson Turner, of Great Yarmouth, East Anglia, England developed a closeness that went way past the plants they were identifying.
Hear their story through extracts from their letters read by performers, Karen Minihan (in West Cork) and Robin McLoughlin (in Norfolk). There are introductory notes by host, Finola Finlay, and an explanation of letter writing, the postal system, costume and customs of the day by historical re-enactor Carrie O’Flynn (Cork City). See some period pieces relevant to the story including the type of microscope Ellen might have owned, some letters and books of Ellen’s and images of her specimens and drawings.
This Zoom performance / talk was based on a highly successful in-person outdoor event in August 2021. Presented by the Ellen Hutchins Festival, Bantry, Co Cork, Ireland.
Watch the webinar for €6 HERE
In 1811, Ellen Hutchins was 26 years old, living at home and caring for her elderly and ill mother and a disabled brother. She was in a remote rural corner of Ireland – Ballylickey, on Bantry Bay, West Cork, Ireland, a place of wild and wonderful landscapes, a huge variety of habitats and a rich diversity of plants, at the time unexplored.
Dawson Turner was 35 years old, a banker, married, with children, living in Great Yarmouth, on the East Anglian coast of England (which he described as horrible sandy flats). He was writing a major work on seaweeds. He was a member of the Royal Society and the Linnean Society of London. He corresponded with many notable people of the day, including Joseph Banks. He was a close friend and neighbour (Norwich) of the founder of the Linnean Society, James Edward Smith. Dawson Turner had written botany books, including one on Irish mosses.
The correspondence had begun in 1807 with the gift from Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins of a box of seaweeds and other plants as a thank you for the seaweed specimens from Bantry Bay that he had received from her via James Mackay at Trinity College Dublin. Ellen and Dawson never met. They corresponded for seven years, right up to Ellen’s death in 1815, aged just 29.
Mirroring the situation in 1811, the performers have ever met in person and Karen Minihan was in rural West Cork, and Robin McLoughlin in Great Yarmouth.
The Ellen Hutchins Festival is grateful to the St George’s Theatre in Great Yarmouth for putting us in touch with Robin McLoughlin, our Dawson Turner. As an interesting coincidence, we later discovered that Dawson Turner’s grandfather had been the minister at St George’s church that is now the theatre.