David Bennett

Ely In A Day

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Ely is just a short train journey from Cambridge, where we live, so it is easy to do in a day.

This is the lantern in the cathedral, and it’s just a quick shot on my phone. Next time I go I will set up something with my camera to get a better shot, but maybe even then I will not be able to capture the Wow! factor.

And it is a big Wow! Looking up and seeing the lantern set into the roof with the light streaming in, and the fact that the whole thing is made of wood and seems suspended on slender struts, makes it well worth seeing.

From Wikipedia

The central octagonal tower has eight internal archways that lead up to timber fan-vaulting that appears to allow the glazed timber lantern to balance on their struts.

The central lantern has panels showing pictures of musical angels, which can be opened, with access from the Octagon roof-space, so that choristers can sing from there.

That must be something – choirboys singing ‘up in the heavens’.

Getting There From The Station

There are a couple of roads to the cathedral that lead up from the railway station. I asked a nice woman which way to go and she said both ways were equidistant (what a lovely word) and she recommended that instead of either of these roads, that I walk up through the park.

Ely is set in the fens – a flat area of England that was under water until drained in the 1600s. A man I met near the cathedral mentioned that the cathedral is known as the battleship of the fens because of the way it sticks out on the horizon against the otherwise flat landscape.

Scottish Prisoners Drain The Fens

Oliver Cromwell’s house is now the tourist information office, and I picked up a book there about Scottish prisoners captured during the English Civil Wars being sent out to work to drain the fens. I’ve only just started it, but I googled around for more information and found that the Third English Civil War (1649–1651) was the last of the English Civil Wars, that had begun in 1642, between Parliamentarians and Royalists.

The war ended at the battle of Worcester when Cromwell’s New Model Army defeated the Royalists under Charles II.

Charles’ army of 16,000 who fought at Worcester included 14,000 Scots, so as the Royalist army was mostly Scottish, and as there was no major rising or support of the Royalists in England, historians have described the war as an Anglo-Scottish War rather than the last gasp of the English Civil War.

After Cromwell’s death there was total confusion that ended with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

And from time to time I wonder how it ever happened that the monarchy was restored. What prompted it?

An American Tribute To The Battle Of Worcester

In 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the battlefield at Worcester. John Adams wrote that he was deeply moved but disappointed at the locals’ lack of knowledge of the battle, and gave a lecture to the townspeople, noting:

‘The people in the neighborhood appeared so ignorant and careless at Worcester that I was provoked and asked ‘And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for? Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill, once a year.

Charles, Prince Of Wales Settles An Old Debt

Before the battle of Worcester, King Charles II bought uniforms for his army from the Worcester Clothiers Company. Having lost the battle and the war, he couldn’t pay the £453.3s bill. He escaped to France after the battle, and didn’t not return to England for nine years, until after the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658.

Despite being restored to the throne, Charles II didn’t repay his debt and the debt remained unpaid until 2008 when Charles, Prince of Wales paid off the 357-year-old debt (without interest).

Scottish Fossils Fill The Gap In The Evolution Record

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350 million years ago, Scotland was part of a much bigger land mass and lay slightly south of the equator.

When the Scottish summer feels very little different from the Scottish winter, it is time to ponder Scotland’s journey over millions of years from the equator to its present position.

On its way north, Scotland brought with it the fossils of small tetrapods, ancestors of every land creature of present times, including man.

Romer’s Gap

But until the Scottish fossils were discovered, there was a gap in the record known as Romer’s Gap, named some ninety years ago after American palaeontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer.

Specifically, there was no fossil evidence of life on land in the fifteen-million-year gap that stretched from 345 to 360 million years ago in the early Carboniferous period.

There was plenty of evidence of life in the sea from 360-million years ago and earlier.

And there was evidence of life on land from 345-million years ago and later – but nothing in between.

Because this gap is the very period when animals moved from the sea to the land, it was a niggling mystery that there was no evidence of life in that fifteen-million-year period.

Enter Self-Taught Palaeontologist Stan Wood

And that’s how things were until a self-taught Edinburgh palaeontologist named Stan Wood began looking in the Borders area in Scotland. He searched for fifteen years before he found what is now recognised as the oldest land-based animal fossils in the world.

From 2008-2011, he uncovered fossil animal skeletons, along with millipedes, scorpions and plants in sites in Scotland.

You can see some of his discoveries at the Fossil Hunters: Unearthing the Mystery of Life on Land exhibition at the National Museum Of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The photo at the beginning of this article is of a fossil discovered by Stan Wood. It is Balanerpeton Woodi. It looked like a salamander and it was about a foot long.

Stan’s Fossils and Edinburgh Museums

Stan donated his fossil discoveries to Edinburgh Museums and there are lots of fossils to see at the exhibition, which runs until 14th August and it is well curated. Go see it if you can. After that, the exhibition will be touring the UK.

Project Tweed

Stan Wood’s discoveries have led on to Project Tweed, involving teams from the Universities of Cambridge, Leicester and Southampton, the British Geological Survey and National Museums of Scotland.

They are working through the material at a microscopic level, investigating everything from plant spores to micro-skeletons to build up a picture of life during Romer’s Gap.

Stan Wood achieved an international reputation as a palaeontologist. He was also the owner of Mr Wood’s Fossils at Cowgatehead at the top of the Grassmarket in Edinburgh. The shop is still there – owned and run by the former manager, Matt Dale.

Matt Dale

Matt took over as manager in 1998. He had been working with fossils in museums in Glasgow following a geology degree and museum studies post-graduate course. Then with Stan’s health failing, Matt bought the business in 2006 and continued following Stan’s death in 2012.

Matt says you’ll find him in the shop most days – unless he is at trade shows in France and the USA, or out in the field looking for fossils.

What It’s Like Inside The Beak Of A Pelican

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At the zoo a month ago, we watched the pelicans. It’s obvious that they are very gregarious. As soon as one of them found something interesting to investigate on land, the others would follow and congregate and huddle close to one another.

The pelicans were so friendly that two of them reached up to say hello to us. And Tamara and I had the experience of having our hands inside a pelican’s beak.

When the pelican closed its beak on my hand, the upper beak felt like being tapped gently with a thin piece of lightweight wood. It was a pleasant experience being investigated delicately by a large bird.

When the pelican closed its beak around my hand, the edge of the beak rasped against my hand as though with very tiny teeth. They were not sharp – just a faint rasp as they closed around my hand.

It was easy to understand that the tiny teeth are for draining water from its throat pouch when the pelican folds its wings, dives into the water, and rises to the surface with fish in its beak.

Because the lower beak is stretchy and translucent, light shines through it and illuminates the inside. Tamara noticed this, and soon we both experienced seeing all the way down the pelican’s throat into its gullet.

Inside the beak of a pelican is like a highway illuminated by yellow light.

Here’s Dixon Lanier Merritt’s limerick that, with several variations over the years, often springs to mind when discussing or thinking about pelicans:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.