Sir (Henry) Clifford Darby

Clifford Darby was never a GA President, but he was associated with the GA in some ways, and was certainly a significant figure in British Geography.

He was present at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the GA's Cambridge Branch, as featured in a previous blog post.

This piece from the British Academy gives a detailed biography of his life and geographical achievements, which were many.
(PDF download)

He was able to gain a scholarship to Cambridge from his village in Wales where he was born in 1909. He lived in lodgings as he couldn't afford the college lodgings. His tutor was former GA President Alfred Steers.
He was also connected with several other former GA Presidents.

Early in his academic career, he was chosen to assist Frank Debenham with some research in Southern Africa. When he returned he used his experiences in his other work.
His dissertation was on the role of Fenland in English history. His early work was a little deterministic, but he reworked it later for a different emphasis on the changing landscape and the draining of the Fens. An area of personal interest given the location of my school in Ely. Not everyone at the University was as encouraging - I liked this story:

His supervisor was Bernard Manning - not the comedian.
He was involved in conversations between the GA and the Historical Association following a joint meeting on "the new historical geography" in 1932. He shared the Common Room with a range of interesting characters including M.R. James (who also wrote about East Anglia)
He also assisted George Philip in the production of their atlases.

During the Second World War, as shown above, he joined many other geographers in helping with the war effort.

In 1945, he took over from another former GA President Percy Maude Roxby at the University of Liverpool.
He took over from Alfred Steers on his retirement in 1966 at the University of Cambridge, having also spent time at UCL (an insitution with strong connections with many former GA Presidents)
He died in 1992.

Source:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Clifford-Darby
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/proceedings-british-academy/87/darby-henry-clifford-1909-1992/

Update: December 2020

In 2003, Chris Kington asked a number of former Presidents what had sparked their passion for geography. He lent me the letters and Dick Lawton mentioned the influence of Roxby and other geographers including Clifford Darby and Bill Mead on his own academic career at the time.

He says they taught him not only about geography, but how to be a geographer...

Early Geography

Thanks to Susan Pike, the current Vice President of the Geographical Association for sharing these images of an old textbook with some advice on the teaching of Geography which will look familiar, even the book came out in 1898...

1969: The death of H J Fleure

H J Fleure was a remarkable man.
He was the librarian of the GA for decades and has his own blog post here on the blog and has been mentioned in so many other posts. He became Honorary Secretary of the GA in 1917, appointed by Halford MacKinder.
He attended GA meetings into his 90s.
In 1969, he passed away, and the final link with the origins of the GA was lost.

The remembrance piece, written by another former President E.G. Bowen, is worth reading to appreciate the extent to which Fleure's work helped define the GA.
It is followed up by a piece from another former President Alice Garnett, who outlines how Fleure joined the GA in 1906.

The piece finishes with some important words for any who follow in Fleure's footsteps and hold an important role within the Association.

Source
Bowen, E. G. “HERBERT JOHN FLEURE.” Geography, vol. 54, no. 4, 1969, pp. 464–469. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567148. Accessed 22 June 2020.

Brian Robson

Updated July 2020

Brian Robson OBE 1939-2020. A world leading urban geographer, shaper of British urban policy, former Head of Geography at Manchester and former editor of the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers has died. He will be sorely missed by his many friends and colleagues pic.twitter.com/8yWRbknMPy

— Manchester Geography (@GeographyUOM) June 10, 2020

Another geographer who has passed recently, following earlier entries for John Cole and Cuchlaine King amongst others.
He had a piece on 'The Urban Environment' published in 'Geography' in 1975
The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Founders medal in 2000 and he was made OBE in 2010.

Robson, B. T. “The Urban Environment.” Geography, vol. 60, no. 3, 1975, pp. 184–188. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40568421. Accessed 14 June 2020.

Update
An obituary by Noel Castree was published in 'The Guardian'.
It explained how Professor Robson helped develop the Index of Multiple Deprivation used by many geographers to explore inequality.

Geographers in Wartime

We are coming to a period when many survivors of the Second World War are in their 80s and 90s and the memories are fading.
Many geographers played an important part in the Second World War.
In 1985, the Royal Geographical Society asked W. G. V. Balchin, who was then the Chairman of the RGS' Education Committee (and a former GA President), the job of collating a report and interviewing survivors on their role.

A report was published in 1987 and can be read on JSTOR (free accounts available)

Balchin explains that geographers proved their worth already in the First World War. He also outlines how an understanding of geography is important during wartime, particular when preparing.

He mentions a number of people with connections to the GA and the Ordnance Survey's role is featured prominently of course.

There are several areas where Geographes are particularly mentioned as being important.
These included the aerial interpretation CIU unit which looked at aerial images and worked out what was on the ground and what had changed since the area had last been photographed.

People like Frank Debenham and David Linton worked in this field.

See previous blog post for more details on this.

Source:
Balchin, W. G. V. “United Kingdom Geographers in the Second World War: A Report.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 153, no. 2, 1987, pp. 159–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/634869. Accessed 16 June 2020.

G H Dury, David Linton and the CIU

When I took my'A' level Geography back in 1980-1982 - doesn't seem possible but it's true - I was asked to buy a Penguin copy of 'The Face of the Earth' by G H Dury. It was actually the same edition as the one shown here on the right.

George Harry Dury's name has cropped up in association with several GA Presidents.

Dury was a hydrologist, interested in rivers. and more widely in geomorphology. He was born in Northants, and studied at the University of London. He taught geography at Birkbeck College. He developed models which extended Bradshaw's Model for rivers.

Like David Leslie Linton, he was involved in air photography interpretation during the war - see Brendan Conway's excellent post on RAF Medmenham for more details on this. Also Balchin's report on wartime geographers features Medmenham. The Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) also included Professor Frank Debenham for example.

Thanks to Brendan Conway for some excellent additional research here as well on G H Dury's work in wartime. Here's what Brendan sent me a few months ago when I mentioned David Linton's wartime work.

One thing about the David Linton profile I found particularly interesting was his WWII work in photographic interpretation, especially in identifying the underground V-weapon factory in northern France (now La Coupole https://www.lacoupole-france.co.uk/history-centre.html).

It reminded me of something that I've noticed cropping up a few times - the role of geographers in WWII intelligence in places such as RAF Medmenham. Linton is one of several who played key roles in intelligence in a similar way to GIS experts in the Bellingcat organisation now.

Other geographers involved in similar WWII activity included H Clifford Darby and Kenneth Mason in Naval Intelligence (https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/humanities-scholars-who-worked-military-intelligence-second-world-war) and G H Dury (George Harry Dury) in photographic interpretation (RAF Medmenham) (https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0020-2754.1997.00398.x).

There's a good book about such work, including interesting references to RAF Medmenham by Jeremy Harwood called 'World War II from Above'. Harwood wrote an article about it 'Spies in the Skies: How Aerial Surveillance Tipped the Balance of WWII'. Here are some quotes indicating links with geographical expertise and how it was used:

'The staff—mostly an eclectic mix of boffins and academics with quite a few women among them—comprised some of the best brains in the country...Glyn Daniel, the first Cambridge archaeologist to be recruited to the Medmenham operation, described his new colleagues as "an ill-assembled collection of dons, artists, ballet designers, newspaper editors, and writers'.

'...the students were introduced to stereoscopic viewing. They were taught how to handle a stereoscopic viewing frame—this was universally referred to simply as a "Stereo." The two photographic prints that fitted into it were termed a "Stereo Pair." '

​Would Linton have worked with Constance Babington Smith?

'Constance Babington Smith was one of them. As well as being the photographic interpreter who first spotted a V1 Flying Bomb on its way for testing, she was the first to spot the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket fighter, the Heinkel He 28, the world's first jet fighter, and the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262, the twin-engine jet fighter that, fortunately for British and American airmen, Hitler insisted be redesigned to be deployed as a fighter-bomber. She and her team detected other top-secret German aircraft prototypes into the bargain'.

Painstaking interpretation would culminate in the meticulous creation of 3D landscape models used to prepare for bombing raids and battles. There's an interesting reference to the challenging geographical learning required by aircrews:

'By the time the war ended, Medmenham's model makers had churned out more than 1,400 models. Some, like the models of the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpedams used to brief the Dam Busters prior to their famous 1943 air attack, were extremely elaborate. Such was the reliance Bomber Command placed on them that, according to Paul Brickhill, author of The Dam Busters, the aircrews taking part in the attack were instructed to "look at these until your eyes stick out and you've got every detail photographed on your mind." '

It's also known that Ronald Lampitt, much admired by geographers and certainly one of my favourite artists, worked in this area of intelligence. His 'geographical eye' and recurring tendency to view almost everything he illustrated from above seems likely to have been strongly influenced by his wartime work, but perhaps also by working with geographers? I'd never been able to find out much about his role during the war until last week when I stumbled across reference to his work by the scientific military intelligence expert RV Jones in his book 'Most Secret War'. It seems that he was very close to the V-weapon investigations as well, so there would be a possibility that he worked with Linton at some point. I summarised the findings in this thread:

https://twitter.com/mildthing99/status/1256611375411073024

Lampitt was recruited by Albert Hugh Smith, who was clearly very close to RV Jones. He later went on to become Professor of English at UCL and acclaimed scholar of Scandinavian Studies and English placenames, so he clearly had geographical interests. Perhaps he had links with Bill Mead at UCL who was also a Scandinavian expert?

Delighted to see the link to Ronald Lampitt - a favourite of mine who I wrote about for the Ordnance Survey's magazine back in the day. I have a much loved copy of the book, and it will definitely have a place in my Presidential lecture in 2022.
Lampitt's illustrations were included in the book which came out in 1948
I wonder if the author also worked in the same sort of setting.
In The Map that Came to Life the map is portrayed as an objective, precise and above all truthful mirror of nature. And this inherent trustworthiness enabled maps to become important features of the lives of successive generations of people.

More on the author and the book here.

Lampitt’s war service was spent with RAF Intelligence. He created meticulous, hand-drawn maps for allied bomber crews, based on aerial reconnaissance photographs. It was this period of his life that started Lampitt’s fascination with aerial views, which he would later use to great effect in The Map That Came To Life.

Sources: 
Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Dury

Balchin, W. G. V. “United Kingdom Geographers in the Second World War: A Report.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 153, no. 2, 1987, pp. 159–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/634869. Accessed 16 June 2020.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049189708703182

Dury, G. H. “Geography and Geomorphology: The Last Fifty Years.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 8, no. 1, 1983, pp. 90–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/622279. Accessed 16 June 2020.

Thanks to Brendan Conway for the additions to this post.
If anyone knows more about these wartime geographers please get in touch.

1968: Professor Alice Garnett

Last updated August 2023

Alice Garnett was a Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield.
She was the second British woman to hold the position of Professor of Geography and the first female President of the GA, and very much connected with its growth and influence.

I believe another of the first few female Professors of Geography may have been Joy Tivy, who is mentioned elsewhere on the blog, but there are a number of candidates it seems.

As Head of the Geography Department she rapidly expanded the department- with 401 students being taught in the department by 1967. She left a legacy of the next generation of geographers and one of the biggest departments in the University. She had previously joined the Geography department as far back as 1924. Hers was a life of geography.

She also held the position of Vice-President of the Royal Geographical Society - another former President to have similar connections with the two organisations. There have been plenty of those mentioned on the blog as it has grown, but the connections have not been the same for a few decades which is a pity. Work for future GA Presidents to continue to pursue.

Alice Garnett's name appears on the GA's Annual Report in 'Geography' from around 1950 onwards, when she started to take a leading role, as the association moved to Sheffield, initially into Park Library before moving to Fulwood Road - a move that Alice was very much an integral part of organising and negotiating.

Ivor Goodson talked about this period:
The period following 1945 does seem to have been critical in geography's acceptance and consolidation within the university sector. Professor Alice Garnett explained in 1968 why this period was so important: 'Not until after the Second World War was it widely the case that departments were directed by geographers who had themselves received formal training in the discipline, by which time most of the initial marked differences and contrasts in subject personality had been blurred or obliterated'. At this point geography departments were established in most universities and the subject had a recognizable core of identity. 

Alice had also, significantly been Honorary Secretary of the GA for some years before taking over the Presidential role, and had also produced the Annual reports that were published in 'Geography', so she was a very important person within the Association for many years. 

She was particularly interested in the connection between school and academic geography.




She was mentioned by several former Presidents that I spoke to as being at the very heart of the GA at the time.

Her Presidential Address was called:
"Teaching Geography: some reflections"
and looked back on some of the previous legacies of the GA's work and what she hoped might happen next.

Prior to her taking up the Presidency, Alice had served as the Association's Honorary Secretary for twenty years: 1947-1967, following the retirement of the previous holder of the post, and continued to support the GA after her Presidential year, along with her colleague Professor David Linton. She helped provide a space for the Association's library and a great many other 'backroom' tasks.
During the war, the GA had the use of a room in the High School of Commerce at the University of Manchester, but Alice moved it to Sheffield University, and found a suitable space in the Park Branch Library on Duke Street.

They persuaded the Corporation of Sheffield to give the GA accommodation in a section of the Park Branch Library. In April 1950, the GA moved for the third time. A fund had been put together to celebrate the Jubilee, but as this fell in 1943 it was not felt appropriate, and the money was saved for the removal expenses. However, Alice Garnett and the other officers managed to arrange the move without touching this fund. Mrs. C. D. Mann, the Chief Clerk resigned at this time.

She also insisted on the value of, and reorganised support for Primary Geography.

She also negotiated favourable terms on the lease of 343 Fulwood Road in Sheffield, which became the home of the GA for many years. More on that to come later.

Alice Garnett’s enduring legacy to her department was her lobbying for a purpose built building for Geography which she achieved where the Geography annexe had been on Winter Street. The building which Geography still occupies was opened in 1970 by the then head of department Ron Waters. Terraced houses on Winter Street were demolished for the new Geography building which was integrated into Weston Park. This and other features including the hexagonal teaching rooms earned the building a Civic Trust commendation.
The building, as designed, contained a library, a map library, a physical research laboratory with a huge flume, aerial photograph analysis room and teaching rooms sufficient for all but the biggest first and second year lectures. It also had offices for academic staff, tutorial rooms, a workshop, photographic and cartographic suites.
Sheffield University Geography Department building in 1970

Source: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/about/history

I visited the Department several times during the early 1980s for talks and a few school-related events. I also visited several times more while working for the GA.

In 1954, Alice published a piece in 'Geography', following the previous year's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations, looking back, taking stock and looking forward. Part of this was to make the most of the GA's stable financial position to pay staff appropriately, so that they were paid in accordance with the work they were doing at HQ. She also wanted to support the Section Committees more, to help them complete the vital work they were doing (and continue to do) to support and push forward the work of the Association. At the time, they were paying their own travel expenses for attending meetings. She reflected on the need to build up a fund. At the time, mostly due to Alice's own persuasion, the GA was given free conference accommodation and also free offices and storage at the Park Library in Sheffield.
She talked about the importance of the 'giving' nature of the Association.



She finished by setting a challenge to the geographers / GA members of 1993.


She was also involved in the GA's role in supporting the development of teacher education. In 1962, for example, 'Geography' featured a piece that she had provided for the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Education on the nature of school teaching for 'average and below average children'. This involved the following GA members, who included teachers. I wonder whether any readers can tell me more about these colleagues.

It concluded as follows:



A piece by Rex Walford, published in 1993 mentioned Alice.
The article was about Mackinder, but included a quote and the follow up listed below:

 Can we now usefully ask of ourselves and of our somewhat fragmented discipline 'Whither the geography of today and tomorrow?' For surely on the answer to this question will depend decision-making regarding the educational value and popularity of our subject in schools and its role as a university discipline and in other institutions of higher education. 
As geographers today probe and strive to expand our frontiers further and further, would our answers now be too disparate to command attention? 

These were the last published words of Professor Alice Garnett (Garnett, 1987). 

She had spent most of her life, beyond her duties in the University of Sheffield, tirelessly working for the Geographical Association, notably serving it as Hon. Secretary in a key period of its life. She had been intimately concerned with the mid-century struggle to make geography an acceptable and widely-available subject in schools. 

A postscript was added by Jo Norcup in late May 2020
She told me that Alice had a sister called Olive Garnett, who was also a prolific geography author. Olive will have her own post on the blog.

Other memories of Professor Alice Garnett are welcome.


Source:
Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Garnett - her maiden name was Crow.

University of Sheffield page: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/alumni-old/history

Fleure, H. J., and H. M. Fleure. “Alice Garnett: Honorary Secretary 1947-67.” Geography, vol. 53, no. 1, 1968, pp. 93–95. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40566483.

GARNETT, ALICE. “Teaching Geography: Some Reflections.” Geography, vol. 54, no. 4, 1969, pp. 385–400. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567138

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8tdurY3CGNQC&lpg=PA97&ots=jiACAnc8q_&dq=pat%20bryan%20leicester%20geography&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q&f=false

Garnett, Alice. “LOOKING AHEAD AND TAKING STOCK.” Geography, vol. 39, no. 1, 1954, pp. 1–4. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40564668

Garnett, Alice. “Memorandum on Geography Teaching.” Geography, vol. 47, no. 1, 1962, pp. 63–71. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565632

Updated November 2020
While researching Stan Gregory and early use of ICT, I came across this by Ron Johnston.

Source:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kVtwDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA90&ots=AHT4_XIJ21&dq=Geographical%20ASsociation%20Package%20Exchange&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false

Obituary

Ellis, Ronald, and Arthur Hunt. “The Geographical Association.” Geography, vol. 74, no. 3, 1989, pp. 272–275. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571681. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020

Alice Garnett obituary.

Plenty more on her dedication to geography here...

I wonder where the painting might be now.

Updated August 2023

I then came across a few tweets suggesting that Alice Garnett was one of the first person to talk about the Urban Heat Island effect in work she carried out.

She also seems to have been one of the first people to use the term "heat shadow".

This blog post explores her book on climate in Sheffield. Written by Alex Stockham.

I found the first clue in the archives at the Central Library. In a book from 1956, Climate in Sheffield and its Region, there’s a study by Alice Garnett, a Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield. It contains the earliest mention of a ‘rain shadow’ describing our city’s climate, the reason for its relative dryness in comparison to Manchester and the Peak. As it goes, air filled with moisture reaches a mountain range and gets buffered upwards. There’s less pressure and it’s colder the higher you go, so the water vapour condenses into a liquid as clouds. When the clouds get too heavy, it rains. On the other side of the mountain range, the air descends and warms up again. The water in the clouds evaporates, leaving a ‘shadow’ of rain where it should have fallen before the descent.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/department/about-department

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tRgrBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=%22Alice+Garnett%22+geography&source=bl&ots=UIiLPDITPt&sig=ACfU3U2Iv9Yc32l8GWK7XGmDuTWpkQIbVQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjW0O7kzNeAAxUXTkEAHSw_AUQ4RhDoAXoECBgQAw#v=onepage&q=%22Alice%20Garnett%22%20geography&f=false

Geddes and Le Play

Updated April 2021

The Le Play Society has been mentioned in quite a few posts on the blog so far.
It was linked with the work of someone else who has been mentioned: Patrick Geddes.
Le Play was actually named after a French sociologist.
Patrick Geddes influenced, and helped to train several GA Presidents, and also present day geographers remain intrigued by his work.




Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Guillaume_Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_le_Play

Beaver, S. H. “The Le Play Society and Field Work.” Geography, vol. 47, no. 3, 1962, pp. 225–240. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565418. Accessed 3 May 2020.

Update April 2021

According to this piece in the GA journal 'The Geographical Teacher' (1921), Patrick Geddes was a GA Vice President... I wonder whether he may have become President.

“Editorial.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 11, no. 2, 1921, pp. 3–5. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40555898. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Geddes

Find out more about him in this short film - plenty more to explore here.

Patrick Geddes - Renascence Man from Stephen Robinson on Vimeo.

Patrick Geddes was an amazing late Victorian polymath who had far reaching ideas about the environment and Man's place within it. I was commissioned by McManus Galleries, Dundee to film and direct a short documentary to accompany an exhibition about his professional life.

Thought for the Day

"I feel that geography teachers have a great social responsibility, and that geography teaching should have a moral - even a spiritual motivation. I don't mean that we should preach sermons... I hope that I can help young people derive some pleasure and satisfaction and interest from the diversity of humanity and the Creation as a whole, and to develop a feeling of the inter-dependence of the human species"

Ernest W (Bill) Young

Author of the classic 'A Course in World Geography' with J. H. Lowry (which I used when at school)

From an interview with David R Wright
Young, E. W., and David R. Wright. “Authors and Their Books: ‘A Walking-Stick, Not a Crutch.’” Teaching Geography, vol. 2, no. 4, 1977, pp. 173–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23750488. Accessed 9 June 2020.

Olive Garnett

In 1968, the GA President was Alice Garnett.
Just before I posted the entry for her, I was made aware by Jo Norcup that she had a sister called Olive, who also spent a life involved in geography education, and was also very much involved with the Geographical Association.


This was the tweet that I mentioned.

#OTD in 1903 Alice Garnett was born. She was the second British woman to become a geography professor, pioneering the subject at @sheffielduni, and the first female President of the Institute of British Geographers. She was also VP of the RGS and President of the @The_GA. pic.twitter.com/oH6fqHIqMf

— Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (@RGS_IBG) May 15, 2020

And this was the response from Jo Norcup.

Then there was her sister Olive and all her geography textbooks (see @AvrilMaddrell)

— Dr Joanne Norcup (@jonorcup) May 15, 2020

Olive Garnett (c.1900–1982), BA, DipEd, Head of the Geography Department (1926–1965), Vice-Principal of Froebel College (1947–1961), Deputy Principal of Froebel College (1961–1965)

I found a portrait here courtesy of the University of Roehampton. It was painted by Leslie Garnett.

It seems Olive was linked with Froebel College for many years, which was known previously as the Froebel Educational Institute, and had the philosophy that children learn through discovery.

There is an Olive Garnett building at Roehampton.

She is mentioned in Rex Walford's book on School Geography in the UK.

A key book from Olive was her 'Fundamentals in School Geography' - I purchased a copy. This provides a great deal of guidance on the teaching of Geography and much which would be familiar to the geography teacher of today. At the end of each chapter, lists of suggested further reading includes plenty of former GA Presidents: Fairgrieve, C C Carter and Alice Garnett of course.



















Source:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p_xfuY8CJ48C&pg=PT115&lpg=PT115&dq=%22marguerita+oughton%22+sheffield&source=bl&ots=xln_U09sEO&sig=ACfU3U0BVaFI8t74PC7xxPHMiijd8QoLyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjbrsfys43pAhXKQEEAHeGlCCIQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Any other information or images relating to Olive Garnett would be gratefully received.

Charles Harold Saxelby

Source:
Parrack, J. C. “CHARLES HAROLD SAXELBY.” Geography, vol. 54, no. 1, 1969, pp. 94–94. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40566741. Accessed 12 June 2020.

Cuchlaine A M King

Professor Cuchlaine Audrey Muriel King died in December 2019.
She was an expert in glaciation and I remember using her book on periglaciation when I started teaching in the late 1980s and wondering how you pronounced her name... She was very proud of her name.
There was also her book with John Cole, who I blogged about recently, on Quantitative Methods which I also remember being in the departmental library back then.
She studied at Cambridge University and earned her bachelor's degree in geography in 1942. She then joined the Women's Royal Naval Service and became a meteorologist and surveyor for the duration of World War II. After her service, she returned to Cambridge and researched sand movement on beaches, earning her doctorate in 1949.

King spent her career studying the influence of glaciers on landscape evolution. She went on expeditions to Skaftafell in Iceland in 1953 and 1954 to study the glaciers there. It was unusual at that time for young women to be allowed to participate in fieldwork in such remote, rudimentary areas of Iceland. The expeditions resulted in a series of papers in 1955 and 1956. Because of her gender, her participation in fieldwork trips was discouraged. However, she participated in research on Baffin Island in the 1960s and the Austerdalsbreen glacier in Norway, and led fieldwork expeditions of her own throughout the Arctic. She published several books throughout her career.

A Yorkshire Post piece said:
With characteristic modesty, she said more than once that her “only achievement” had been to “pave the way for gender equality in Arctic exploration,” recalling the research she undertook on Baffin Island in the far north of Canada in the mid-1960s with the eminent geologist, Prof Jack D Ives, a former student of hers at Nottingham University.

This piece threw up another link:

King was taught by Professor Frank Debenham, another former GA President - from 1952 in fact.
In 1959, King began teaching at the University of Nottingham, where she remained for the rest of her career. A research laboratory is named in her honour.
King was one of the earliest women to become a professor of geography in the United Kingdom, and she retired in 1982 - she may have gained that honour earlier if not for discrimination. Cuchlaine King was honoured with the David Linton Award of the British Society for Geomorphology in 1991.

The Linton Award is named after the former GA President who has appeared already on this blog.
A full obituary was published in the latest issue of the Geographical Journal of the RGS-IBG.

To finish, a story I liked:

Enjoying a picnic while on a field trip to Lunedale in the Pennines, Cuchlaine King and her group of geography students were approached by an inquisitive sheep. It came close enough for Cuchlaine to offer it a bite of her sandwich, which it accepted with gusto.
“That was so sweet,” one of the students said. “What sort of sandwich was it?” “Lamb,” came the reply.
Sources
Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuchlaine_King

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9Pc-KlQ3I54C&lpg=PA90&dq=cuchlaine%20king%20nottingham&pg=PA90#v=onepage&q&f=false

Brian Whalley wrote an obituary for 'The Guardian'

https://www.richmondshiretoday.co.uk/askriggs-church-bells-will-ring-thanks-generous-donation/fullsizeoutput_1b74/

On textbooks

"Suppose you put all geography teachers in a heap, and pull out all those who are teaching it as a second subject. Then pull out all those who are running the school play and the Second XI and haven't a lot of spare time for original thought  thought and for assembling their own resources. Pull out those who are a little more lazy than they ought to be. Pull out from the heap those who are experimenting widely and deeply with two or three classes, and find that they need something to fall back on with other classes. Pull out also those in their first or second year of teaching. If you pull out all those, you're left with a body of experienced and knowledge able and enthusiastic teachers who can quite probably get on without a textbook. But they will be a small minority, and most teachers, for most of their teaching, need some help of the kind that a textbook can supply. And the durability and availability of a textbook, as well as the wide choice of books, makes me think that the text book can't be beaten."

Ernest W (Bill) Young

Author of the classic 'A Course in World Geography' with J. H. Lowry (which I used when at school)

From an interview with the late David R Wright
Young, E. W., and David R. Wright. “Authors and Their Books: ‘A Walking-Stick, Not a Crutch.’” Teaching Geography, vol. 2, no. 4, 1977, pp. 173–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23750488. Accessed 9 June 2020

1967: Mr. E C Marchant HMI

Last updated October 2023

E C Marchant was a teacher at Marlborough College, a Headteacher in India and HM Inspector of Schools, but also a cartographer and scholar who travelled with J A Steers.

I was not able to find out as much about Ernest Cecil Marchant as I was about some of the other, older Presidents, which is a feature of this period generally, but eventually developed a suitable post with the thanks of others.
Marchant had featured in a previous article from 1960, describing a conference in Manchester, where he spoke in his position as HMI. He was also mentioned by Michael J Storm, when he became President 20 years later, who was also a school inspector. 

I then discovered a link with Marlborough College, C C Carter and Cyril Norwood. This led me to go back to the very helpful Archivist at the college - see later.
https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~rsgs/cgi-bin/ifa_series1.pl?series=3624

The link, which can be seen above describes a bequest of lantern slides to the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, who I may have to visit perhaps as well during my Presidential year to discover any further artefacts they may have relating to previous GA Presidents with a Scottish connection in particular.

This collection was donated to the RSGS in 1997 when Marlborough College was undergoing refurbishment. The materials date largely from between WW1 and WW2. At that time the Geography Department at Marlborough College was directed by E C Marchant who later became Senior Inspector of Schools. He was assisted by C C Carter whose text "Landforms and Life" was one of the best sellers for a generation. Carter and Marchant established a tradition in which Geography was firmly rooted in practical work and case studies long before these became so fashionable elsewhere. A great deal of mapwork was done, and the relief models were clearly made to illustrate famous areas, such as the Isle of Purbeck. 

Lantern slides were used to illustrate teaching and practical work, largely surveying, was employed.

Acknowledgements to Christopher Joseph, Head of Geography, Marlborough College for text.

During this time, in the late 1960s, the GA's Council was being chaired by H. J. Fleure.

Marchant is also quoted in Ivor Goodson's book, with some thoughts from inspections.

The advances in university geography after the Second World War partly aided the acceptance of geography as a subject suitable for the most able children, but problems remained. In 1967 Marchant noted: 'Geography is at last attaining to intellectual respectability in the academic streams of our secondary schools. But the battle is not quite over'. He instanced the continuing problem: 'May I quote from just two reports written in 1964, one of a girls' grammar school and the other on a well-known boys' independent school. First, 'geography is at present... an alternative to Latin, which means that a number of girls cease to take it at the end of the third year... there is no work available at A level'. Or second, perhaps a more intriguing situation: 'In the ‘O’ level forms, the subject is taken only by those who are neither classicists, nor modern linguists, nor scientists. The sixth form is then drawn from this rather restricted group with the addition of a few scientists who failed to live up to expectations'

To seal its acceptance by the universities and high status sixth forms, geography had to embrace new paradigms and associated rhetoric.  The supreme paradox is that the crisis in school geography in the late 1960s led not to change which might have involved more school pupils but to changes in the opposite direction in pursuit of total academic acceptance. This push for university status centred around the 'new geography', which moved away from regional geography to more quantitative data and model building. The battle for new geography represented a major clash between those traditions in geography representing more pedagogic and utilitarian traditions (notably the fieldwork geographers and some regionalists) and those pushing for total academic acceptance.

Marchant's Presidential Address connected with his interest in school inspection - which I guess went down well with the audience - and was called 'Some responsibilities of the Teacher of Geography'.

In it, he talks about the role of the teacher, with some interesting quotes, from the perspective of the school inspector, and also relating to his travels in what he called the 'Old World'.
He started by mentioning Professor Haggett, who had spoken at the IBG conference he had attended the previous year in Sheffield, and said that although it had been fascinating the discussions that had taken place had mostly been beyond what most teachers would usefully apply.

I wonder what impact that work had on schools from the perspective of the school inspectorate of the time.
He said of the geography teacher that, "he (sic) must remember that he is preparing the majority of his pupils not for degrees in geography, but pretty soon for living to the full, and perchance for contributing to the full, in a bafflingly complex and ever-changing world".

This was an era of the quantitative revolution, and the Madingley Conferences, which I have blogged about previously, which happened about this time. Marchant's views are interesting.
He referred to the comments of Joseph Acton Morris in 1965 who called for more reality in teaching.
He said of some teachers that they "deceive themselves intop believing that once a pupil has drawn a sketch map or looked at one in a textbook, he knows what a landscape looks like, and what it is like to live there." He shared a map of most of the SE which was labelled "Fruit and Vegetables", and of a textbook in a primary school on the Geography of Norfolk which had a map labelled "Wheat and Turkeys".

A few other quotes from his address:
"we have a vital responsibility to ensure that our subject is not superficial, but is intellectually rigorous".

He also introduced me to a new word: pabulum.

He talked of a student whose "mind had been cloyed with a pabulum of what were, to him, quite meaningless abstractions".
He says that this (the late 60s) was "the era of mathematical geography".

Marchant also wrote a book called 'The Teaching of Geography at School level' which contained his thinking, based on his experience of school inspection.

He also co-wrote a book on geography of Europe with another GA President: C C Carter, with whom he was connected at Marlborough College. Carter was also mentioned in his Presidential address, where he talked about the need to have the grammar in geography to help with the rigour of dealing with its vocabulary.

At this point, I had no image or further information, but contacted Marlborough College.

The archivist Grainne proved very helpful once again and provided further details for me.

Ernest Cecil Marchant

Perse School

Scholar of St John’s College, Cambridge

1^st class Geography Pr.1

Marlborough College 1931-38

Principal of Daly College, Indore 1939

An impressive building, built from concrete it appears.

CIE 1946

HM Inspector of Schools

The link with the Perse School proved to be interesting as that is local to me, in Cambridge.

I also managed to get an image from Grainne, taken as part of a staff photo. ECM is the gentleman in the middle of the photo.

In 1972, he led a Working Party of the GA and RGS exploring Geography and Careers.

"The eminent French geographer, Henri Baulig, insisted that there was nothing in the realm of the natural sciences which gave a more fundamental training of the mind than "placing the student in front of a landscape, or a map or photograph, and inviting him, drawing also on his previous knowledge, to make certain individual deductions and to be prepared to defend his conclusions. He may not get very far: certain aspects of the problem may escape him : but his conclusions will be none the less valuable; for they will be based on his own observations, supported by previous knowledge, and arrived at through the chain of argument by which he links up the one with the other."
Source: MARCHANT, E. C. “Geography for Careers. REPORT OF THE FINDINGS OF A WORKING PARTY OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION AND ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.” Geography, vol. 57, no. 4, 1972, pp. 327–332. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40567916. Accessed 3 June 2020.


Marchant died in September 1979, aged 77.

References
No Wikipedia page - perhaps one needs to be made for Marchant.

Shepherd, W. H. “A One-Day Conference on the Teaching of Geography: A REPORT.” Geography, vol. 45, no. 4, 1960, pp. 300–303. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40565188.

Presidential Address

MARCHANT, E. C. “Some Responsibilities of the Teacher of Geography.” Geography, vol. 53, no. 2, 1968, pp. 129–144. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40566906.

Obituary in Geography by J W Morris
Morris, J. (1980). MR. E. C. MARCHANT. Geography, 65(1), 58-58. Retrieved August 26, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40570277

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3554461-the-teaching-of-geography-at-school-level

Thanks to Grainne for her help with this entry.

More on Daly College:
Daly College website also had a small photo of Marchant when he was the Principal from 1939-1945, before returning to the UK to work in school inspection.

He was mentioned in a Principal's report from 2007, attended by his children apparently.

The fourth and last personality I will highlight is a former Principal who again has nothing named in his memory. Mr. E C Marchant, with the support of the then President, Nawab of Bhopal, and the then Vice President, the Maharaja of Panna, visualised an independent and egalitarian India and had the courage to transform the Daly College from a Chief’s College into a Public School. He not only reorganised the system along modern day lines but met with the Heads of some other schools and thus made the Daly College a founder member of the Indian Public Schools Conference.

He helped found the Indian Public Schools' Conference in 1939, and attended the inaugural meeting.


He was made a Companion of the Order of the British Empire (CIE) in the Birthday Honours List in 1946.
Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE)

If anyone has further information on E C Marchant (ECM) please get in touch.

Updated July 2022

A small piece in Marchant's obituary mentions the Great Barrier Reef exhibition, which he undertook with J A Steers.

This led me back to that expedition

Inventive cartographer E.C. Marchant charted the Great Barrier Reef during a 1928-1929 expedition with a plane table composed of wooden board, a camera stand, and…floss? 🤨 #GreatBarrierReef #Cartography @CityLab https://t.co/7FiGPYoM3x

— USC Spatial Sciences (@USC_SSI) July 9, 2019

And a Maplab article with an example of a map that he produced.

The Low Isles, from a survey by M.A. Spende, T.A. Stephenson, and E.C. Marchant, 1929.
Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-1929 Scientific Reports, Volume III, No. 2

Updated August 2023

He lived at 7 Melbourne Place, Cambridge in 1911- his father was born in Downham Market - a town I pass through on the way to work.

Updated October 2023

He took part in a 1960 conference in May, at Manchester University, attended by 200 teachers.

The opening lecture was given by Mr. E. C. Marchant, H.M.I., who spoke on Geography and Education. Mr. Marchant suggested that the impact of geography on the education of the pupil might be looked at at three levels

1. The level of purely factual information

2. The level of intellectual training

he late Mr. C. C. Carter, remembering his own training in the classics, wrote a Geographical Grammar which had to be learnt as a preliminary to a course in geography, by which means he hoped to impose a rigorous training equivalent to the one he himself had enjoyed. Mr. Marchant believed that there is a "grammar" of geography and that it is salutary to the discipline of the subject that that grammar be at some time acquired. However, modern language teaching largely derives the grammar from the language, not the language from the grammar; and scientific method requires that generalizations be built up empirically, not learnt at the outset. Working from the particular to the general is desirable also in order to enlist the active interest of the child. In geography, field work and its methods - observation, recording, interpretation of pictures and statistics - are important illustrations of this.

3. The level of geography as a humanity

 If in addition to selection the geographer can use the overtones of words to evoke the spirit of a region then he is truly being both a scientist and a humanist. Roxby, Fleure, Mill and Vidal de la Blache have used the evocative power of words.

"Mankind must be made much more aware of the world it lives in, its rigorous limitations and its limited possibilities. Above all it must be assisted and persuaded to think of the world as a whole"

D. L. Linton

Curious about Nature

I have previously blogged about the Field Studies Council's 75th Anniversary celebrations which were attended by quite a few former GA Presidents, and the Past and present GA President. They presented and were mentioned in other presentations, particularly one by Professor Tim Burt, my former tutor when I was an undergraduate at Huddersfield Polytechnic back in the day.

This event was also a launch event of a kind for a new book called 'Curious about Nature', which was written by Tim along with Des Thompson. This explores the development of field studies and the contributions of individuals. It is available to purchase from all good book shops, and a sample can be viewed on Google Books - see the link at the bottom of this post.

A few GA Presidents of note are mentioned in the book, when they had a link with the development of fieldwork.

There is a mention for Geoffrey Hutchings, the master of the fieldsketch.

This is followed by a paragraph on the influence of Sidney Wooldridge and Dudley Stamp.

There is also a picture of J A Steers, which I was after for ages until Andrew Goudie found me one - I have added this, along with other information to an update on the post for J A Steers elsewhere on this blog. Use the SEARCH function to find any previous Presidents.

A review from the present GA President Gill Miller, who has been associated with FSC for many years:

'This book amply delivers its strapline 'passion for fieldwork'. With its informal yet informed writing, this eclectic collection of practitioners and research findings provides something for everyone. There is no denying its central message, that field studies inspire and ignite curiosity and remain central to our guardianship of the planet.' 

Gill Miller, President of The Geographical Association, 2019-20

Source:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2onPDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA80&dq=cuchlaine%20king%20nottingham&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=cuchlaine%20king%20nottingham&f=false

J. A. Morris - special school magazine to mark his retirement

Updated June 19th 2020 with more memories of Jammy...

Very many thanks to Emma Halstead - Administrator, Latymer Old Students Association for taking the time to track down a special issue of the Latymer School Magazine from September 1962 marking the retirement of Joseph Acton Morris. It includes a better version of an image of him in the original post from 1965.




Emma also mentioned my blog in a newsletter to former pupils and several of them got in touch with their memories of Jammy Morris. Thanks to Emma for keeping these coming as they arrive...

Meg Knott told me:
I was taught at Latymer (1951-56) and well remember Mr Morris. One winter I threw a snowball which unhappily scored a direct hit on the back of his neck. I was terrified and thought, 'I am going to be expelled for this!' But instead he gave me a very mild ticking off. He was a nice man.

Thanks to Emma for sending this card which had some memories of his teaching and a school trip to Yugoslavia... from Barbara D - also chucking challk and the board rubber...



I found an image of the book and copies for sale on ABE Books


With regards to Jammy Morris - I remember one particular lesson when I couldn't answer a question he fired at me.  I was made to stand up on a chair and in front of the whole class, he said he would  tell my brother Roy (five years older) that evening , when he saw him at A.T.C, how I couldn't answer a simple question.  
You can imagine how small I felt - and something I have never forgotten! Mr. Morris was an Officer in A.T.C.
Regards Doreen B , at Latymer 1943-48

More memories to come once I have permissions...