February: two events and significant dates
The significant dates explained:
9th February is the anniversary of Ellen’s death in 1815, aged just 29. The date is now perfectly placed between St Brigid’s Day National Holiday, on Monday 5th February this year, and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11th February.
And the two events:
Both of these are in Cork and celebrate Ellen Hutchins. In the evening on Thursday 8th February, the Cork Literary and Scientific Society is hosting a talk on Ellen Hutchins and in the morning of Saturday 10th February, the Environmental Research Institute of UCC is hosting a free drop-in Open House session in the Ellen Hutchins Reading Room.
8pm on Thursday 8th February
The Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain Street, Cork T23 EEC3
Madeline Hutchins will recall Ireland’s first female botanist, who lived from 1785 to 1815, in ‘Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey, Bantry Bay, botanist and botanical artist: her story from her letters’.
Discover the determination with which Ellen pursued her botany, her passion for plants and love of landscape, her struggles with illness and the literature she enjoyed. Some elements of Ellen’s story will be told in her own words, in extracts from her letters to her brothers and to fellow botanists, using recordings of readings by Karen Minihan (actor and theatre director).
See Ellen archives including a drawing, three seaweed specimens, letters and books.
€8 on the door for non-members
website HERE
Open House at the Ellen Hutchins Reading Room and Archives
Saturday 10th February from 10:30am to 12:30pm at the Ellen Hutchins Building, Lee Road, Cork T23 XE10 with easy parking
Free of charge
Drop in and use a microscope or hand lens to see the fascinating miniature world of lichens with guidance from Paul Whelan, leading Irish lichenologist. Try writing with a quill pen and folding a letter in the style of the early 1800s. See the archives, displays and films, browse the books.
This is an opportunity to see the current display in the Ellen Hutchins Archives Cabinet of a drawing, three seaweed specimens and letters of Ellen’s. Also on display will be other archives including books belonging to Ellen and Madeline Hutchins, researcher on Ellen and her great great grandniece, will be there to chat about them.
There will be information and activities suitable for adults and children aged six and above. Drop in or stay all morning.
The Ellen Hutchins Festival publications on botany and the small biography on Ellen will be on sale. Pick up the Festival’s free leaflets introducing seaweeds, lichens and bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and copies of the Twelve Tree Trail.
The Open House is to celebrate Ireland’s first female botanist and to mark International Day of Women and Girls in Science. It is a joint event of the Ellen Hutchins Festival and the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) of UCC.
Established in September 2022 when the former ERI Lee Road Building was renamed the Ellen Hutchins Building, the reading room has a collection of books on botany, biodiversity and caring for plants and the planet. There is a display, a short film and information on Ellen’s life and work as botanist of Bantry Bay. See beautiful seaweed specimens and a small exhibition on correspondence from the early 1800s including postage stamps and seals.
The Ellen Hutchins Archives Cabinet displays one of Ellen’s watercolour drawings of seaweed and currently has three sheets of seaweed specimens of Ellen’s on loan from the Herbarium, Botany Department, Trinity College Dublin. There are also on display, specifically for the Open House, some of Ellen’s letters, books she owned, as well as botany books related to her story. See where Ellen pressed plant specimens in between the pages of a French commercial dictionary that had belonged to her father, and see a natural history book that she dated 1st January 1810.
Paul Whelan, author of Lichens of Ireland and Great Britain – a visual guide (April 2024) will show you why lichens are worth a closer look. They are a truly unique life form. See an amazing miniature world with great beauty and a variety of forms and colour.
See how Ellen would have used a quill pen and oak gall ink to write her letters, then folded and sealed them. Sit down and see how well you can handle the pen and ink, writing your own letter, then be shown how to do the folding and sealing.
Free. Drop in or stay all morning.