This website, and its sister site for school students, Botanist Ellen Wixsite, are run by the Ellen Hutchins Festival team to share the story of Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) of Ballylickey, Ireland’s first female botanist, to promote botany and botanical art, and to celebrate the biodiversity and beauty of Bantry Bay, West Cork, Ireland. The Ellen Hutchins Festival team has been active since 2015 with a range of events, talks, exhibitions, and developing short films, website and printed materials about Ellen Hutchins, the botany of Bantry Bay and botanical art.
The Ellen Hutchins Festival in the Bantry Bay area was first held in 2015, on the bicentenary of Ellen’s death, and it went on to win a Hidden Heritage Award from the Heritage Council. During that first Festival two plaques were unveiled to commemorate Ellen, one at her birthplace and lifelong home, Ballylickey House, and another where she is buried in an unmarked grave in Garryvurcha graveyard, Bantry.
The nine day long Ellen Hutchins Festival, during Heritage Week in August in the Bantry Bay area, is an annual celebration of Ellen’s life and work, botany, botanical art, and the biodiversity and beauty of Bantry Bay.
The festival includes a wide range of events designed to encourage people of all ages to explore the natural and cultural heritage of Bantry Bay. There are guided nature walks, botanical art workshops, exhibitions, boat trips, seaweed events, talks, living history events, a Wild Child Day, self-guided trails and traditional craft and art demonstrations.
The Ellen Hutchins Festival is a not for profit organisation based in Bantry, Co Cork, Ireland. It exists to encourage and promote public engagement with botany, botanical art, local history and other elements of culture and heritage in Ireland, with a particular focus on the story of Ellen Hutchins, Ireland’s first female botanist, and the botany and biodiversity of inner Bantry Bay. The Ellen Hutchins Festival Team organises activities, mounts exhibitions and produces materials that promote botany, botanical art, and Ellen’s story.
The first Ellen Hutchins Festival in 2015 was instigated by the Bantry Historical and Archaeological Society working with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and members of the Hutchins family. The Festival became an independent organisation in 2016 and a company limited by guarantee in December 2020.
This website is supported by Cork County Council through the Creative Ireland Programme – further information from creative.ireland.ie and ireland.ie.
