Celebrating Croll: Who was James Croll?

James Croll is one of those remarkable Victorian characters who made a fundamental contribution to our current understanding of science, but who is now all but forgotten except in specialist circles.

James Croll

Coming from a modest rural background near Perth, Croll was largely self-taught through reading, his enthusiasm for learning sparked by The Penny Magazine of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

For much of his life he struggled with illness, and he held a succession of different jobs, from millwright to shopkeeper to insurance salesman. It was in 1859, when he became a janitor at the Anderson College in Glasgow and gained access to its extensive library, that he became actively involved in pushing the boundaries of glaciology.

His first paper on glacial epochs was published in 1864, and in 1875 he published the landmark Climate and Time, the distillation of his theory of ice ages and Earth’s orbit. In all, he wrote dozens of scientific papers, amongst other things explaining global oceanic circulation, calculating the age of the sun, developing a theory of evolution, and remarkably presciently predicting the thickness of the unexplored Antarctic Ice Sheet.

“I remember well that, before I could make headway in physical astronomy,… I had to go back and study the laws of motion and fundamental principles of mechanics. In like manner I studied pneumatics, hydrostatics, light, heat, electricity and magnetism. I obtained assistance from no-one. In fact there were none of my acquaintances who knew anything whatever about these subjects.” - James Croll

The Celebrating Croll appeal launched last week. The RSGS is aiming to rejuvenate the outdoor space and the interpretation panels in our visitor and education centre in the Fair Maid's House., to give visitors more to see, maximise the space available to visiting groups, and to celebrate the legacy of James Croll.

Read more about the campaign, and how you can help.

Perthshire's Adventure Festival - Jam Packed with Exciting opportunities for adventure!

There are a fantastic range of events involving the RSGS taking place as part of the fun filled Perthshire Adventure Festival.

The Fair Maid's House will host a range of exciting presentations through the day on Saturday 14th June, culminating in an evening of truly inspirational talks at the North Inch Community Campus.

This day of intimate presentations, storytelling and Q&As at the Fair Maid's House will run 10am-4pm. These talks are free to enter but spaces are limited - call 01738 472236 or book online.

10am - Steve Bate
11am - Adventure Storytelling
12pm - Tim Baillie MBE
1pm - Calum McNicol
2pm - Adventure Storytelling
3pm - The Meek Family

Evening Talk - 14th June, 7pm, North Inch Community Campus

Three inspiring speakers in one evening at the North Inch Community Campus.

The Meek Family, Stephen Venables and Sean Conway will give presentations on a variety of subjects. The Meeks will discuss their project to get their young family away from screens in into outdoor adventures. Stephen Venables will talk about his journey to South Georgia to mark the centenary year of the Endurance expedition, Extreme endurance adventurer Sean Conway will share the story about his Great British Triathlon - Swimming, Cycling and Running the entire length of Britain.

Pre-booked tickets are just £8 for RSGS Members, or £10 on the door. Book at 01738 472236 or online.

Adventure Photographer Lukasz Warzecha will launch his photography exhibition at the Fair Maid's House over the weekend, and will speak at the Fair Maid's House on Sunday 15th at 10am. Tickets to this intimate talk session are £10. Book at 01738 472236 or online.

As if that wasn't enough the weekend is filled with even more activities - including another inspiring talks evening on Friday 13th, and a range of outdoor activities from bushcraft to archery and even bungee jumping! See the full programme at www.pkc.gov.uk/adventurefestival

Celebrating Croll - our new appeal.

Celebrating Croll

A message from Professor Iain Stewart. 

Professor Iain Stewart, President of RSGS

James Croll 

Since it opened in July 2011, the Fair Maid’s House has been enthusiastically welcomed by its visitors – adults and children alike – as an imaginative, informative and inspirational place for learning about geography and the world around us.

Now, in celebration of the RSGS’s 130th anniversary, we plan to refresh and extend the interpretative displays and facilities inside and outside the building, to give visitors even more to see, to maximise the space available for visiting schools and other groups, to give us more flexibility when running events, and to celebrate the tremendous contribution made by the 19th-century Scottish scientist James Croll to geographical thinking and our modern understanding of climate cycles – how variations in the Earth’s orbit affect its climate, leading to regular and predictable ice ages.

The Garden Today

We want to transform the plain ‘garden’ area into an exciting outdoor learning and visitor space. To do this, we need to employ a project designer and provide a budget for materials and labour, and we plan to include specially-commissioned artwork that reflects Croll’s work. We want to create an ‘outdoor room’ that will be another beautiful space for visitors and will honour an inspirational Scottish scientist.

To complement this new development outdoors, we also plan to update the interpretation panels and displays indoors with attractive and accessible information and learning materials, so that the Fair Maid’s House continues to be a repository of current thinking as well as historical knowledge.

Some design ideas from students at the Edinburgh College of Art

We have set a target for the project of £16,000. If we can raise more than this from members and other supporters, then we can do even more to improve the Fair Maid’s House for all our visitors, and to support its ongoing running costs.

Every donation will make a difference, so please help us if you can.

Donate Online

Alternatively you can print and complete this donation form and send to RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU

RSGS Featured on the BBC's Newsnight Scotland and Good Morning Scotland

Volunteers and staff off the Royal Scottish Geographical Society featured on last night's edition of Newsnight Scotland and on this morning's Good Morning Scotland on BBC Radio Scotland.

CEO Mike Robinson, Collections & Information Convenor Margaret Wilkes and members of our volunteer collections team, Kenny Maclean and Dr Andrew Cook were interviewed about their favourite items from the collection.

Watch Newsnight Scotland here from around 10minutes in:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02v6y4k/Newsnight_Scotland_06_06_2013/

Listen to Good Morning Scotland here from around 1hr 49mins:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01slsm5

The Cuthbert Room in the Fair Maid's House.

Collections Corner: Concerning German Town Plans, Black Forest Gateau and Good Conservation Practices.

Dogged work by one of our Collections Team members, who’s just completed the identification and listing of over 400 German Town Plans (produced and printed by the then British War Office between 1943-45) led to the Team celebrating this doughty event by working our way through two packets of suitably Geographical-sounding ‘Black Forest Gateau Cookies’, hunted down in a well-kent British chain-store close by. 

Our Team Member’s work involved checking the geographical location of the 400 towns and villages (some very small) and recording the latitude and longitude of these as a first stage towards eventual production of an electronic graphic index to these plans.  To build on this endeavour, a post-graduate student - on the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Geography MSc Course in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) - is presently doing his Project on electronic indexing in connection with our map collections.

A nice bottle of German-produced Gewürztraminer or Riesling might have been a finer geographical tribute but Curators of Collections know full well that maps and alcohol are not soul mates and – true to best Curatorial practice - must be kept far apart.  So a tea-break with our German-sounding cookies was taken in another room, leaving the Town Plans to rest in peace, free from the hazards of greasy fingers or biscuit crumbs.  As Curators the world over know, a cuppa and a ‘piece’ at one’s desk are ‘verboten’ if one has maps, books, manuscripts, artefacts or other collection items located in close range and curatorial fingers must be kept clean at all times.

Samples from the German Town Plans. Click to enlarge.

Our dogged Team Member was later released to cool off amongst our Polar Collections. (In 2008 we acquired two important collections, the Angus Erskine Polar Collection and the Scottish Arctic Club Collection and a full list of the books in these collections is available on our website).  A future blog will expand on another Polar theme to mark the bi-centenary of the Scottish (Orcadian-born) Arctic Explorer and surgeon, Dr John Rae (1813-1893), who spent a large part of his career working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada and was also heavily involved in the search for the missing North-West Passage explorer, Sir John Franklin.  

The Society has extensive book, journal, map, and photographic collections which are available to members. These collections are continually updated, and RSGS welcomes donations of relevant material.  Please send any enquiries about the collection to collections@rsgs.org and we'll get back to you as soon as possible (please note that the Collections Team is voluntary and meets once a week).

For more information about the Collections, the Enquiry Service and Access see http://www.rsgs.org/collections/access.html

  
www.rsgs.org

Fair Maid's House - A Volunteer's Story

Being retired for a few years and not really having a focus, when I saw the request for volunteers for the Fair Maid's House, I thought that might be an idea of something useful to do for the summer.

I didn't know much about RSGS, so went onto the web to find out a bit more. That got me even more interested. I have always been interested in geography and maps, since the National Geographic magazine came in the post when I was quite a small child in the 1950s, and when it was a map month that was even more exciting, especially if it was of the UK and you knew the places on it. I certainly would not class myself as a geographer, just an interested person.

Travel has been a big part of my life after being widowed in my forties. I decided that I had to see a bit of the world before I was too old to really enjoy the travel. Highlights have been trips to the west coast of America and Hawaii, the Canadian Rockies, a recent visit to Singapore and, with my work, a year on secondment to Oman.

The Fair Maid's House has some fantastic exhibits.

So – a visit to speak to Fiona, and a volunteers information session, and I was ready to go!

 When we opened in April, it was still quite cold and sometimes snowy, but it was the Easter holidays and we had a steady stream of visitors. Some visitors want to just look around on their own. Others are quite happy for you to tell them stories about the displays. In the beginning I don't think my stories were very accurate, but after being on with some more experienced volunteers they improved over time. You keep finding out more all the time. There were times when it would have been nice to have had more visitors, but unless you move the Concert Hall so as we can be seen, I am not sure how that can be changed. The photographic display during the summer months made us busier and let people experience the house as well. Lots of visitors say they will be back.

The highlights of volunteering are the people – the staff of RSGS, the other volunteers, and of course the visitors. People really love to share their experiences with you – where they live, where they have visited, and lots of times the fact that they knew the Fair Maid's House in the past. Visitors have come from all over the world. One amusing story was the group of young locals who put their heads round the door and asked if they could come in. They went round and were asked to sign the visitors book. The result was that, in amongst the “very interesting” and the “excellent”, there is now the comment “BEAST”, which apparently means “very good” in young speak.

Will I do it again? Of course I will. Roll on April 2013. Will you join us?

If you are interested in volunteering in the Fair Maid’s House during 2013, please contact Fiona Parker on 01738 455050 or email fiona.parker@rsgs.org.

 

Collections Corner - Tales from the Collections Team

Our collections are still emerging from endless cardboard cartons, large white elephant-like containers and from map chests, all previously hidden away in enforced off-site storage. This storage was imposed on us when we moved our Headquarters in 2008 from Glasgow to Perth and then during the time our new accommodation in the Fair Maid’s House was being made ready for us.

Each week some, if not all, of our enthusiastic 10-strong Collections Team gathers for the day and exciting things suddenly resurface.  Watch this space to see what emerges over the next weeks and months! 

ONE HUNDRED YEARS ON 

In November a 1925 map of Arctic Lands, published in America by the National Geographic Society emerged from the depths of our ‘Arctic’ map drawer.  One of our keen-eyed Team was examining this and spotted in the right-hand corner a tiny line of print. This revealed that on that particular spot the world’s largest passenger ship - the Titanic - on its maiden voyage, sank on 15 April 1912.

One hundred years and 7 months later, our RSGS Team stopped work to look.  Here, shown lying to the south of the Newfoundland coast – at the small scale of map used by the cartographer it looked very close to the coast, though in fact was some 600km off - was where so many lost their lives.

One tiny line on a map, yet a poignant reminder of a geographical location where something happened which shocked the world, and continues to do so.

 

A Section of the National Geographical Society's Arctic Map.

 

A close up of the marking  "Titanic Sank".

The Society has extensive book, journal, map, and photographic collections which are available to members. These collections are continually updated, and RSGS welcomes donations of relevant material.  Please send any enquiries about the collection to collections@rsgs.org and we'll get back to you as soon as possible (please note that the Collections Team is voluntary and meets once a week).

For more information about the Collections, the Enquiry Service and Access see http://www.rsgs.org/collections/access.html

Fair Maid's House Nominated for Architecture Award

The Royal Scottish Geographical Society's visitor centre has been nominated for a prestigious architecture award.

Perth’s oldest house has been shortlisted in the Glasgow Institute of Architecture Design Awards. The Fair Maid’s House was renovated and extended by Page/Park Architects between 2010 and 2011 to become the RSGS visitor and education centre.

The annual GIA Awards are recognised at local and national level and are one of the main highlights of the annual GIA programme.

Glasgow Institute of Architects

The visitor centre has been shortlisted in the ‘Office, Commercial, Industrial, Leisure or Retail’ category. Past Winners in this category include a design award for Shettleston Housing Association Offices and a commendation for the Creative Industries and Media Centre in Stornoway.  The GIA award a number of design awards and commendations, a sustainability award, and sometimes a Supreme Award for a stand-out property.

Awards will be presented by the RIAS President at the GIA Annual Members Dinner on 9 November 2012.

The Royal Scottish Geographical Society relocated to the historic North Port of Perth in 2009, purchasing Lord John Murray’s House and taking a long lease from the Council on the adjacent Fair Maid’s House, giving the Society the opportunity to meet our expanding needs and establish a permanent headquarters capable of fulfilling our requirements. 

Lord John Murray’s House serves as an administration base, while the link and new extension to the Fair Maid’s House provides archive and general collections stores, an education room, exhibition and interpretation areas, and a story telling room.

The new architecture, based on the design of a map chest in a palette of glass, steel and copper, appears to slide out of the less historically significant ‘link’ building, highlighting the importance of the Fair Maid’s House and Blackfriar’s wall, while not impacting on the historic front elevation of the house. 

The Fair Maid’s House was made famous in1828 by the Sir Walter Scott novel The Fair Maid of Perth.  Parts of the building date back to the 1400s.  The visitor centre opened in July 2011. It is currently closed for the winter season, but is used for educational visits, and is available for larger group bookings and as a venue