The Time & The Place

History & Geography: Early 19th Century & Bantry Bay, West Cork

On this page you can find pieces about Ellen that emphasis the time and the place in which she was studying botany, and remind us of the differences between then and now. There are extracts from Ellen’s letters, an account of a visit by botanists to Ballylickey in 1809 and information on the type of microscope Ellen might have used. There is a piece about what Ellen might have been wearing while plant hunting and at home, and some wonderful photographs that show the splendours of the Bantry Bay area.

Ellen Hutchins - a significant scientist for all time

by Breda Moriarty

For Ellen, collecting and identifying specimens would have been a difficult task. I have spent time in some of the places around Bantry where Ellen conducted a lot of her work, including her home place of Ballylickey. Visiting these coastal areas fills me with admiration for the work of this pioneering female botanist. The scale and precision with which she undertook her botanical inquiries is astonishing even in our contemporary terms. She often rowed boats and hiked to remote locations. She would send the samples by post from West Cork to Dublin to be verified by colleagues such as James Mackay and Dawson Turner. In the 1800s this would have been both expensive and time consuming. If I were to attempt what Ellen did in the present day, then I would have a number of resources at my disposal, including the internet, reference guides, modern equipment, ease of transport — the list goes on. She discovered new species and identified rare plants, work that has contributed hugely to the most significant collections of botany in Ireland and the UK. Her contribution to the science of botany is as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.

Breda Moriarty is Research Assistant, Deep Maps: West Cork Coastal Cultures. http://www.deepmapscork.ie/

An amazing woman

by Fionnuala O’Neill

Ellen was an amazing woman. She chose to learn more about the most difficult groups of plants – seaweeds, mosses, lichens – just for fun!* She was entirely self-taught but found out facts about these plants that the experts of the time, with all their expensive microscopes and scientific equipment, hadn’t discovered. She was a young woman in what was then (and still is) a very remote part of West Cork in Ireland, and lived at a time when the opinions of men – especially well-educated men – were valued more than women’s. Yet she struck up friendships and working relationships with highly respected botanists of the time, in Britain as well as Ireland, and corresponded with them as an equal. Even today that would be quite an achievement. Two hundred years ago, it must have been almost unheard of.”

*Ellen writes that she has been “amusing herself by studying botany”.

Dr. Fionnuala O’Neill is a professional botanist who works in an ecological consultancy in Dublin, Ireland. Her work takes her all round Ireland, surveying a wide variety of habitats including woodlands, grasslands and coastal environments. During her PhD she became very familiar with the mosses and liverworts of the oak woodlands in Glengarriff, 10 miles from Ellen’s home in Ballylickey, and found a sample of Jubula hutchinsiae, her first introduction to the name of Ellen Hutchins.

Was it possible?

by Susan Steele

Ellen was born in 1785 in Ballylickey. She was a female scientist in a time when women could not even enter libraries, when women had limited access to education. She was a woman who struggled with serious illness and cared for her sick mother and her invalid brother.

Yet, by the age of 27, she had learned to identify and catalogue nearly eleven hundred plants that occurred in the Bantry area.

Identifying these without detailed texts, without computers and preserving by specimen or by drawing each of these is an incredible achievement. I didn’t believe that what she did was actually humanly possible until I read her letters and saw her drawings.

Susan Steele, PhD, MBA, MEd
Authority Chair, Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority

Three Mini Biographies with Personal Perspectives

A Note on Ellen Hutchins by Mark Lawley, a botanist interested in the history of natural history.

Ellen: One of the First, by John Parnell, Professor of Botany at Trinity College Dublin.

Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey: Botanist, by Angela O’Donovan, Cathaoirleach (chairperson) of the Bantry Historical & Archaeological Society.

A note on Ellen Hutchins

by Mark Lawley

Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) was one of the first botanists to explore Ireland’s native flora.

Extract:

Ellen was a daughter of Thomas Hutchins (1735-1787) of Ballylickey House and his cousin Elinor née Hutchins (1743-1814), and took up botany after being treated for illness by Dr Whitley Stokes, who was keen on botany as well as being a physician. Ellen was also cousin to the Irish physician and botanist Thomas Taylor (1786-1848) of Cork and County Kerry. Family connections were important to Ellen, who lived at a time when it was quite normal for middle-class people to marry relatives, and when physicians had to be able to identify plants, many of which were the source of medicines.

Mark Lawley is a botanist who is also interested in the history of Irish and British natural history. His biography about Ellen and other bygone bryologists* can be found on the British Bryological Society website under learning more & bryohistory.

*Bryologists study bryophytes – an informal grouping of the following plants – mosses, liverworts and hornworts.

Ellen: one of the first

by John Parnell

Ellen Hutchins, is known as Ireland’s first female botanist. She might be better considered as one of the first botanists of either sex working in Ireland and one of the early pioneers of botany anywhere in the world.

Why was Ellen and her work remarkable?

Firstly, Ellen lived and studied plants in what is even now a remote corner of Ireland – Bantry Bay. When Ellen was living there, Bantry was exceptionally difficult to get to: it really was very isolated, the roads were in a terrible state, especially over the mountain passes and it was easier to travel by sea.

Secondly, Ellen grew up in the late 18th Century. At that time the American War of Independence had just concluded, the slave trade to America was at its height, the French Revolution had concluded with the ascendency of Napoleon leading to the Napoleonic Wars and the French fleet had anchored in Bantry Bay: this was the time of Wolf Tone and the United Irishmen. Naturally, very little was known about the plants that grew in Ireland at that time.

Ellen was an indefatigable* botanist finding large number of plants, especially seaweeds, and in novel places, thereby making a significant contribution to baseline knowledge about Ireland’s plant biodiversity. Such knowledge is now considered critical in terms of conservation and development. So, in summary, Ellen was working in turbulent times, and in a remote location, and on a subject about which very little was known.

John Parnell is Professor of Botany at Trinity College Dublin.
*indefatigable – always determined and energetic in trying to achieve something and never willing to admit defeat. It is a great description for Ellen and her botany.

Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey: Botanist

by Angela O’Donovan

Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) Ireland’s first female botanist was born and lived most of her short life in her home place at Ballylickey beside the shore of Bantry Bay in West Cork.

Because she was a female, she was not allowed to attend University. However, she was a very determined young lady, and she basically educated herself in the many aspects of botany, using books she could access from a family friend in Dublin, in whose home she lived for a short while during her convalescence from an illness. She very much enjoyed city life in Dublin, living with the family of Dr Whitley Stokes in a very lively household.

Ellen’s father died when she was only two years old, and her only sister died when Ellen was just four years old. When Ellen was in her late teens her mum got ill and as Ellen was the only girl in the family, she had to leave Dublin and return home to the very isolated Bantry Bay area to care for her mother. At that time, there was no social care system such as we have today. Although Ellen and the Hutchins family were part of the Ascendancy, yet when sickness came to the family, they had to rely on their own resources to deal with it.

It was during these years caring for her mam in the very early 1800’s that Ellen Hutchins blossomed out as a superb botanist, collecting plants that grew in her local area, from mountain top to lakeside to seashore. From comments written about Ellen by the chief botanists of that era both in Dublin and in the U.K., it is clear that Ellen was top class at finding and identifying such a vast range of plants including many sea plants (algae). There are a number of plants named after her, and rightly so.

Ellen lived a lonely life in West Cork caring for her mother. West Cork was extremely isolated at the time, with no proper roadways, no railway, and no motorised vehicles. She often complained of having no one of her own age in the locality, as a friend or companion. Life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Ireland was dictated by status. Ellen, as part of the Ascendancy, could not under any circumstances have any dealings with the lower class (“the mob”) who were mostly Catholics, although she appeared to have a lot of sympathy for the plight of these poor people. So she had no social life after she left Dublin, which she regretted. But Ellen accepted her lot, and persevered with her duties of caring for her mother.

However, every spare moment she had, she availed of it to tend to her plants. These plants were the love of her life. In reading her description of finding new plants, she describes them as “Little Gems”, Little Treasures” etc, and one can feel the sheer satisfaction she achieved from her work. In fact, botanising, and receiving letters from other famous botanists of the day, was her only joy in life. Ellen Hutchins, as a pioneering scientist, was truly committed to her subject. And Bantry, West Cork and Ireland are very proud and hugely indebted to Ellen Hutchins for all her hard work and commitment, in utilising her brilliant skills as a botanist in finding and identifying so many plants that were, at the time, new to science. These plants from Bantry Bay and surrounding (plant rich) territory are now recorded, and preserved in museums and colleges for the benefit of current-day students studying botany.

Angela O’Donovan is Cathaoirleach (chairperson) of the Bantry Historical & Archaeological Society

Botanists at Ballylickey

When Lewis Dillwyn and two other botanists visited Ellen at Ballylickey in 1809, Dillwyn kept a diary from which we can learn about Bantry Bay and the Hutchins household.

A picture of Bantry Bay and the Hutchins household at Ballylickey

In the summer of 1809, botanists Lewis Dillwyn, Joseph Woods and William Leach travelled to West Cork, and they had with them a letter of introduction from Dr Whitley Stokes of Dublin to Ellen Hutchins at Ballylickey.

From Lewis Dillwyn’s diary we get his impressions of Bantry Bay, which he described as ‘heavenly’, and the Hutchins family set up at Ballylickey. Dillwyn’s party travelled in to Bantry from Dunmanway:

‘From the summit of a high hill we enjoyed a grand and impressive view of Bantry Bay which is surrounded by wild mountains.’

The letter of introduction was sent by messenger from Bantry to the Hutchins family at Ballylickey, and an invitation was issued to Dillwyn and friends to spend the next day with the family. In the morning, Ellen’s youngest brother, Sam, who was visiting from Dublin where he was studying law at Trinity College, rode to Bantry to escort them to Ballylickey.

In his diary, Dillwyn described the house at Ballylickey and his day with the Hutchins household, and a return visit the next day for breakfast and then his journey over Priests Leap to Kenmare.

Monday 17th July 1809

‘The house [Ballylickey] surrounded by a plantation of trees is delightfully situated at the head of a small cove… & commands a beautiful prospect of the bay & its surrounding mountains.

I busied myself until noon in looking over a part of Miss Hutchins’s extensive and well arranged collection of algae [seaweed] etc and we then, accompanied by her younger brother [Sam] embarked on board the family pleasure boat for a sail on the bay. We landed on a rather large island called Whittie [Whiddy], the shores of which are very steep and rocky & there I gathered several marine algae which I never saw growing before.

We returned to Ballylickey and after dinner employed ourselves until 10 o’clock in examining different parts of Miss Hutchins’s extensive collections

The master of the house at Ballylickey is Mr Thomas Hutchins who about ten years ago lost the use of his limbs so that he is obliged to be carried from one room to another, & with him an aged Mother and his Sister [Ellen] reside. The liberality, politeness and hospitality of all these we have great cause to remember.’

Tuesday 18th July 1809

‘In the bay large quantities of corallines (coral sands) are dredged up for the purposes of manure, & on our way to Miss Hutchins’s, I for an hour examined some heaps in which I found several scarce and valuable shells & among these are two or three which Mr Leach thinks are new to Britain.

About half past twelve, we with great regret parted from our new friends at Ballylickey & set out for Kenmare. At 1 o’clock we arrived at the foot of the Priests Leap….. It is a tremendous mountain for a carriage to pass & can only be accomplished with great difficulty on which account we found a respectable farmer with fifteen of the peasantry waiting by Mr Hutchins’s order in readiness to assist us.

The prospect from its summit is very grand and extensive. To the southward the smooth and glassy surface of Bantry Bay with its numerous creeks & inlets formed a fine contrast to the dark line of its surrounding mountains, & a large tract of country with the Atlantic Ocean beyond as if spread in a map beneath us.’

Writing to fellow botanist Dawson Turner, Lewis Dillwyn describes Bantry Bay as ‘perhaps the best garden in the world for the marine algae (seaweed), and they there grow in deep pools secure from the ravages of every storm, and as you know, attain an enormous size’.

For a modern day picture of ‘heavenly’ Bantry Bay see the Wild Atlantic View, described as Ireland’s most beautiful viewing point. For a short (2 min) “overflight” video of Bantry, see here.

If you would like a virtual visit to Bantry Bay, or if you are visiting in person, see the Heritage Trail page for a self guided tour of the area and enhance this with the Audio Guide which includes readings from Ellen’s letters and Lewis Dillwyn’s diary.

Extracts from Ellen Hutchins' Letters to Dawson Turner

Taking just one short time period in 1811, and selecting passages from Ellen’s letters that describe aspects of geography and social history, we find out about the area she lived in and explored when plant hunting. (These letters from 1811 were transcribed in 2017 and this is the first time that this material has been published.)

Three Extracts from Ellen’s Letters to Dawson Turner: 1811

“If the weather would moderate I should try to go to the mountains. I expect to do something during the course of next month. I have planned several little excursions but the weather is desperate for every thing & what is worst of all for the poor people’s potatoes, for you know when we want potatoes we want every thing. I am afraid the poor will starve next year.”

Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner 29th May 1811

“Yesterday was delightful on the mountain. I went to a small Lake around which the mountains rose very suddenly & cast a deep gloom on the lake. I rather crept than walked up the side of a mountain for the ascent was so steep I could hardly stand upright. …

I intend going to a very steep place that I saw at a distance where a rivulet runs down the side of a mountain. I crossed the rivulet at the bottom of the mountain in a little green valley where a solitary cabin stands from whence nothing but mountains can be seen & at a considerable distance from any other human habitation. I longed to spend a week in this cabin & walk about among the rocks.”

Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner 24th July 1811

“I am glad to find Mrs. Turner is gaining strength & hope she will be fully recovered before winter. She has the advantage of agreeable society to amuse her mind & support her spirits. You seem to have valuable & agreeable people always at your house. Mr. Mathias must be a delightful man. I have often heard of him, tho’ a man may have much celebrity in London & his name be unknown in this obscure corner of the world. However we begin to hear more & be more known than we were a very few years ago, thanks to the French since they visited as Military people & other strangers have got into the country [district]. Before that time you could hardly imagine any thing more retired than this country [district] or more completely shut out from all knowledge of what was passing any where else.”

Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner 16th October 1811

One Whole Letter

On 29th September 1811, Ellen wrote to Dawson Turner in her normal fashion; covering a great range of topics in one letter, and running out of paper. For the last page of text, she turned the full page sideways and wrote over it. This is called cross hatching. The photographs of the letter pages show the cross hatched page and allow you to see if you can read it. The full text of the letter is given, so you get a feeling for the breadth of issues that Ellen would cover in one piece for correspondence with her greatest botanist friend. The style of the language, as well as references to literature, give a useful sense of the period in which she was writing. This letter was transcribed in 2017 and is published here for the first time.

Ellen: Letter to Dawson Turner

Here is the text of the whole of one letter written by Ellen to Dawson Turner and images of the original letter. Seventy of Ellen’s letters to Turner have survived, and fifty of his to her.

The Ellen Hutchins Festival are very grateful to the Milwaukee Irish Fest Foundation Inc for a grant that has enabled nearly forty of Ellen’s letters to be transcribed and typed. This means that for the first time nearly all of her letters to Dawson Turner are available to researchers on Ellen in typing rather than in her handwriting and with cross hatching (writing over a page of text with a second one).

In the letter text [square brackets] indicate where text is missing or illegible, or contain a note from the transcriber.

Ellen’s letters to Dawson Turner are held in bound volumes of the Dawson Turner Correspondence in the Wren Library of Trinity College Cambridge, and the text and images are shown here by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge.

Ellen to Dawson Turner: 28th September 1811

I thank you very much, my dear Sir, for your kind & interesting letter. No part of it gave me so much pleasure as that relating to your family. After the length of time that I have experienced your kindness you [__] feel that I must naturally be interested in the health & happiness of all around you & that it gives me great pleasure to hear that Mrs. Turner is recovering health & spirits [_] make you all happy & enable you to enjoy each other. When she returns from the country & brings all her girls back to you, I shall expect to hear that you are all as chearful [sic] & contented as such minds as yours deserve to be even in this world. I am glad to hear my little child is getting on so well, tho’ one cannot give credit to the whole of what her Nurse says. I hope I may please myself with believing that she is advancing as fast as she naturally ought to do. If she has but health she will soon hold up her head & look knowing.

I have been so kept employed for some time past with a variety of little affairs that I have not been able to read, draw, or go out to the mountains. Next week I expect to be at liberty & return with great pleasure to those employments that please me most. I shall xxxx very soon be able to do the drawing of Fucus fructiculosus for you and some others that I wish you to have. I have a Conferva very near F. fructiculosus but a distinct species. It seems intermediate between this Fucus & Conf. fucoides, having the habit of the former & the jointed structure of the latter. I have got a large Rivularia that I think may be new of which you shall have the specimen & drawing. Some Conferva that I have never yet sent you. The other day I met with the lateral fruit of Conf. elongata in a very fine state. Do you wish for the specimen? If you have not seen it, I think you would like it. No, my dear Sir, it is not partiality for you that blinds me. I am very sure that you would give fine figures & good descriptions of the plants that Dillwyn has but imperfectly represented, and as the whole of the submersed Algæ must be thrown together for a new arrangement, I think it would be a most desirable thing that the whole should be done by one person & particularly by you, who I am firmly persuaded understand more of this tribe than any other person. I am glad you are near the end of the Fuci. You seem to wish it so much & beside I am anxious to see the conclusion.

The specimens from Mr. Hooker that you sent to Mr. Mackay have arrived quite safe. The Engravings &c you say that Mr. H. sent by post never came & I now begin to fear they are lost. I should regret them extremely on every account & very much on acct. of the specimen of Dawsonia polytri[choides?]. I beg you will return my best thanks to Mr. Hooker. His specimens of Jungermanniae are of great value to me. I have examined them very carefully & compared them with mine. I am greatly pleased to find how rich I am, & how few this one spot wants of the whole of the British species. I suppose with the Engravings Mr. H. sent his opinion of some of the species I lately met with which are quite different from any of [__] I think I have met with J. pubescens which I had mistaken for a large vary. of J. furcata. I have a few others that may be new which I shall in a day or two enclose to you thro’ the Bishop of Norwich. I can hardly think the xxxxx moss I sent you with the Pinguicula can be Bryum alpinum. I must send you more. I have all my Jungermanniæ made up to send you and many other things. I would have sent them by Mr. Mackay but could not send them to Dublin in time for him. I shall also send the list of our plants, and of what I want. This I would have done sooner, but that I had not time. The few moments I have had to myself have been spent with poor Tasso. I read his life over & over with fresh gratification. It appears to me very

[first line/s of the cross-hatched section illegible]

…… so able [?] judgement is [___] that I hardly dare to express an opinion. I can say it pleases my feelings but how far they accord with those of other people I can not say. I live so completely retired & from the habit of keeping my thoughts very much to myself I should hardly venture to speak them. I never think of Tasso but with the highest admiration & regard. Your quotation from Marston’s ode is most beautiful. I had not seen it & shd be very glad to see the whole. Byron I delight in, I believe most people do. While his poetry delights, his life pains one. I used to think that superior genious was accompanied by superior virtue, but I find it is otherwise & now believe that plain good sense & virtue are more frequently to be found united. I should like to believe that every perfection was added to genious, it would be pleasing to one’s feelings to think so, but I believe it would be wrong & unjust to those who are not so exalted. I cannot conclude without saying that my Mother is if any thing rather better since the weather has been cool. I am now strong again. Mrs. T. is probably by this time returned from the country. I beg you make our kind wishes acceptable to her & believe me your ever obliged friend.

E. Hutchins
Sept. 28th 1811

Ellen's Microscope

Of all the technical equipment that a botanist uses today, a microscope and a hands lens or “glass” are the only ones that Ellen would have had, and the microscope would have been of a fairly basic design.

We know that Ellen had a microscope when she started her botany studies and that she and her botanist friends said that it was “not the best”. It was limited in how much it could magnify things. Later Ellen replaced it with a better one and she drew many of the seaweeds again, using higher magnifications than before.

The microscope in the photo here is the sort we think Ellen might have had as her second, better one. It is a Jones Improved. Its barrel and eye piece are set vertically. The next one that Jones produced was the Most Improved, and it could be tilted, making it much easier to use.

What did Ellen wear?

It can be helpful in understanding a period of history to have pictures from that time of the ordinary and everyday things. See a delightful piece on clothing of the period (developed for our sister website for schools) here.

Link here to the video of a Zoom talk (1 hour 20 minutes) about Costumes and Customs – Women’s lives in the early 1800s. The talk was given by Carrie O’Flynn, historical re-enactor from Cork City, during the Ellen Hutchins Virtual Festival in 2020. Learn about the layers of clothing, clothes for different times of day, social expectations and etiquette, and see some wonderful images of clothes from the period. There is also a 10 minute piece on Getting Dressed, showing the layers of women’s clothing.

Bantry Bay

While drawings and paintings of the time can give a great feel for the period, it can be easy to forget that Ellen, her family and the botanists who visited Ballylickey saw the landscape and seascape of Bantry Bay in glorious technicolour the same as we do. Here are some wonderful photographs of a very special place.

photographs taken by local photographer, Deirdre Fitzgerald and others

Key to abbreviations used in photo captions

HFC – Hutchins Family Collection KEW – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London NHM – Natural History Museum London TCC – Trinity College Cambridge TCD – Trinity College Dublin

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The Time & The Place