Ellen Hutchins Talk: Cork Literary & Scientific Society Thursday 8^th February

Open House: Ellen Hutchins Reading Room
Saturday 10^th February

Irish Heritage News article: New finds add to Ellen’s story

2024 Festival dates: Saturday 17^th — Sunday 25^th August

Talk for the Cork Literary and Scientific Society
8pm on Thursday 8^th February
The Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain Street, Cork T23 EEC3

Madeline Hutchins will recall Ireland’s first female botanist, who lived from 1785 to 1815, in ‘Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey, Bantry Bay, botanist and botanical artist: her story from her letters’.

Discover the determination with which Ellen pursued her botany, her passion for plants and love of landscape, her struggles with illness and the literature she enjoyed. Some elements of Ellen’s story will be told in her own words, in extracts from her letters to her brothers and to fellow botanists, using recordings of readings by Karen Minihan (actor and theatre director).

See Ellen archives including a drawing, three seaweed specimens, letters and books.

€8 on the door for non-members
website https://corkliteraryandscientificsociety.ie

Open House at the Ellen Hutchins Reading Room and Archives

Saturday 10th February from 10:30am to 12:30pm
at the Ellen Hutchins Building, Lee Road, Cork T23 XE10 with easy parking
Free of charge

Drop in and use a microscope or hand lens to see the fascinating miniature world of mosses and lichens. Try writing with a quill pen and folding a letter in the style of the early 1800s. See the archives, displays and films, browse the books.

This is an opportunity to see the current display in the Ellen Hutchins Archives Cabinet of a drawing, three seaweed specimens and letters of Ellen’s. Also on display will be other archives including books belonging to Ellen. Madeline Hutchins, researcher on Ellen and her great great grandniece, will be there to chat about them.

There will be information and activities suitable for adults and children aged six and above. Drop in or stay all morning.

The Ellen Hutchins Festival publications on botany and the small biography on Ellen will be on sale. Pick up the Festival’s free leaflets introducing seaweeds, lichens and bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) and copies of the Twelve Tree Trail.

The Open House celebrates Ellen Hutchins and marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11th February).

For more information see:
https://ellenhutchins.com/current-upcoming-events/

Significant February dates

The 9th February is the anniversary of Ellen’s death in 1815, aged just 29. The date is now perfectly placed between St Brigid’s Day National Holiday on Monday 5th February and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on11th February.

2024 Ellen Hutchins Festival Dates - Saturday 17th to Sunday 25th August

The programme planning has started and we expect to have some events fixed by the time of the next newsletter, which will be on 9th February, to mark the Ellen Hutchins anniversary.

Irish Heritage News article - New Finds add to Ellen’s Story
The article went online on 1st January to link to the Natural History book of Ellen’s that was one of the new finds. She had written her name and the date - 1st January 1810 - in the book.
See https://irishheritagenews.ie/new-finds-add-to-the-story-of-irelands-first-female-botanist-ellen-hutchins/

With best wishes

Madeline Hutchins
Ellen Hutchins Festival
ellenhutchins200@icloud.com
www.ellenhutchins.com