Slobodan Markovic goes to LoessFest 1999

 In 1824 Karl Caesar von Leonhard defined Loess in volume 3 of his great work : Charakterstik der Felsarten. That was a beginning for loess studies.  1999 was just about the 175th anniversary of that remarkable loessic event and a conference was held to mark the occasion. It was held in Heidelberg and Bonn and was the largest and most ambitious Loess conference ever attempted. It was organised by Edward Derbyshire, Ian Smalley & Ludwig Zoeller.

ED made enormous efforts to raise funding so that distant scholars could attend, and as a result there were loessic contributions from far and wide; it was a truly international meeting and the conference part, in Bonn, was beautifully housed and organised. IS was secretary of the INQUA Loess Commision at that time and had access to a small amount of INQUA funding. ED suggested that this funding should support an applicant from Serbia who deserved some assistance- so INQUA support was provided. This applicant was of course Slobodan. Many years later ED was heard to observe that ' never had INQUA funds been better deployed'  it might be claimed that loess scholarship took a great step forward (or similar extravagant claims may be made). SM participated in the 1999 INQUA LoessFest; it was a memorable occasion..

 

Windy Day: a once a year discussion of things aeolian; Loess & Dust & Sand Dunes etc

 Once every year (more or less) the Windy Day meeting is held- usually at a university in Middle England. The topics discussed relate to aeolian sediments and aeolian geomorphology. Its a one day meeting and very informal. Here is some history in the form of a list of meetings:

1.   1993   Friday 7th May                University of Oxford

2.   1994   May                                  University College London

3.   1995   Thursday 11th May          University of Sheffield

4.   1996   Wednesday 8th May         Nene College, Northampton

5.   1997   Wednesday 2nd April       Nottingham Trent University

6.   1998   Thursday 14th May          Queen Mary, University of London

7.   1999   Wednesday 23rd June       Cheltenham & Gloucester College

8.   2000   Tuesday 30th May            Anglia Polytechnic University

9.   2001   Tuesday 29th May            University of Luton

10. 2002   Monday 27th May            University of Oxford

11. 2003   Wednesday 14th May        University College Northmapton

12. 2005   Wednesday 2nd February  Geological Society, London  

13. 2007   Wednesday 24th October   University of Northampton

14. 2008   Friday 24th October           Kings College London

15. 2009   Friday 23rd October           Loughborough University

16. 2010   Monday 18th October        Royal Geographical Society, London

17. 2011   Wednesday 19th October    University of Sheffield

18. 2012   Wednesday 17th October    University of Leicester

19. 2013   Wednesday 23rd October      University of Southampton

20. 2014   Wednesday 8th October       University of Oxford

21. 2015   Wednesday 21st October      University of Reading

22. 2016    Wednesday 26th October     Loughborough University

23. 2017    Wednesday 1st November    University of Manchester

24.  2018   Wednesday 7th November    University College London

25.  2019    Wednesday 30th October     University of Northampton

26.  2022     Friday 17th June                  Loughborough University

4 meetings at Northampton, 3 at Loughborough and Oxford, 2 at UCL and Sheffield. Delegates were able to observe the evolution of Nene College as it became University College Northampton and then the University of Northampton.  The Luton meeting took place just before Luton University disappeared. WD just survived the Covid 19 pandemic; its future is under consideration.. there will be a meeting in 2023: Friday 19th May 2023 at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.

             27. Oxford University  2023

             28. Liverpool University  2024

             

             29. Sheffield University  2025

             30. the suggested venue is the University

                    of Southampton 2026

Thermogravimetric Analysis of Essex Loess

 A new review shows the extent and nature of the UK and Irish loess; this note is designed to complement that excellent compiliation- it concerns the loess in south east Essex

C.Bunce, T.Stevens, I.Smalley, A.Assadi-Langroudi  2022   Loess in Britain and Ireland; formation, modification and environmentsl significance, a review in memory of John Catt 1937-2017.  Proceedings of the Geologists Association

The loess is concentrated in the south-east of the county, near to Southend on Sea. The Greater Essex Mineral Resource map shows the location with reasonable precision.

Grenville Lill managed to obtain brickearth samples from the Star Lane and Cherry Orchard Lane brickworks. These were possibly the last two brickearth producers in Essex. As far as we know the only substantial TG analysis on London Brickearth was carried out on these samples.

LL65: Notes for a History of INQUA

 The history of INQUA which was presented in LL65 (April 2011) can be accessed in two places: on the official INQUA website- the LL history has become the official history- go to www.inqua.org>about>history, nicely laid out but lacking pictures. If you want the pictures of the logos etc go to the Michigan State University presentation of the whole collection of LL and call up LL65: loessletter.msu.edu. If you have access to an original hardcopy of LL65 preserve it- no doubt it will become a bibliographical treasure.

The P.D.Tilley map of the loess in southeast England

 Colin Bunce has produced a new version of the map which P.D.Tilley presented at the 1961 INQUA meeting in Poland. Tilley participated in the Loess Symposium organised by Julius Fink. The new map supplements the new paper on the loess in Britain and Ireland by Bunce et al (2022). in Proc.Geol.Assoc- available online- should appear in hard copy in the October issue of PGA.

Ian Lindsay Freeman b.1927

 Ian Lindsay Freeman, b.1927, probably in Dundee; joined the Building Research Station in Garston, Watford in 1962; retired in 1980s.

 This is the hypothesis: That the ILF paper on the mineralogy of ten British brick clays, published in the Clay Minerals Bulletin in 1964, is the best available listing of the mineralogy of British brick making materials. No other readily available source of mineralogical data is apparent. ILF sample 63AH gives an analysis of a London Stock Brick mixture- one of the very few to give any information on this important source of bricks; bricks made from the loess of south-east England.

The interest in the work of ILF arises because of the connection to the 'Loess in Britain' project. Acknowledgements for assistance go to: Dave Morgan, the Mineralogical Society, Monica Smalley. Picture from the BRE publication Building Magazine 11 June 1971 pp.69-70

I.L.Freeman 1964.  Mineralogy of ten British brick clays. Clay Minerals Bulletin 5, 474-486. 

I.J.Smalley 2021.  London Stock Bricks: from Great Fire to Great Exhibition.  British Brick Society Information 147, 26-34

John Hardcastle in England

In the late 1880s John Hardcastle invented loess stratigraphy and initiated the study of scientific palaeoclimatology. He did this in Timaru, in South Canterbury, in the South Island of New Zealand. Harcastle was in his thirties when he made his critical observations on the loess deposits of the Dashing Rock section on the coast at Timaru; he is seen as a New Zealander, making his discoveries in New Zealand, but he was born in, and spent a few years living in, England.

1858: the ship Maori leaves Gravesend, in Kent, and travels to Lyttelton in the South Island of New Zealand. The Maori sailed on 23 March 1858 and arrived in NZ on 14 July 1858. On board were the Hardcastle family:

Thomas Hardcastle, aged 40, labourer and mechanic; his wife Caroline 33, and children John 10, Thomas, Elizabeth, Cresser, Caroline, Edward and Charles.

It was an assisted passage, the family received some financial support from an immigration promoting association.

1851: there should be some trace of JH in the 1851 census. This requires more searching. There is an entry for John Hardcastle b. about 1847 in Heath, Yorkshire and listed as living at Allington in Nottinghamshire in 1851. JH would be the only child to be listed by the UK census; he was captured by the 1851 census; by the time of the next (1861) census the family were living in NZ.

1846: birth certificate. JH may have been born on 1 Sept.1846 at Beverley in East Riding of Yorkshire. That would make him 10 when he left on the Maori- which agrees with the data on the passenger list. A dating problem; some other sources give 21 January 1847 as birth date, and the birth location as Heath, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. JHs parents- Thomas and Caroline were married in Beverley in June 1846. Timaru District Council lists his birthdate as 21 January 1847; the marriage date probably makes the January date more likely.

Three documents to start the search for the junior John Hardcastle. Travelling with John on the Maori was his younger brother Cresser. Now Cresser could be a person of interest due to his very unusual name; Cresser is a good marker- and where Cresser is John should be also. And why Cresser?  the Hardcastle male names are straightforward names like Thomas, John, Edward and Charles- where did Cresser come from?  The mother of JH and Cresser was Caroline, and her maiden name was Hebb. Another distinctive name which may help in the great search for details of JH in UK.

Some details: Cresser Hardcastle b.Newark?, Lincolnshire, England in 1852; d. Timaru 1928

Important book: The Roots of the Hardcastles; an Old Yorkshire Family, by Michael Ronald Hardcastle. [TROTH] The chapter about the Hardcastles moving to Australia and New Zealand- particularly useful. The emigration list in TROTH omits Thomas- this was presumably a simple typo.