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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Our research is cited in the new online 'Register of British Slave Traders' database: here's the entry for Richard Wilding of Llanrhaeadr Hall, who supplied Thomas Pennant with information from his time working as an enslaver's agent off the Guinea coast britishslavetraders.org/individual/p...

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Ymunwch â ni, Hydref 15fed yn y Llyfrgell Genedlaethol! Launching the first taste of our new editions of Thomas Pennant's Welsh tours, October 15th in Aberystwyth.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

In our edition of Thomas Pennant's 1772 tour you can read his rather shocked account of these òrain-luaidh (waulking songs) on Skye "the fury of the song rises; at length it arrives to such a pitch, that without breach of charity you would imagine a troop of female dæmoniacs to have been assembled"

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

'...a pot or urn full of coins was found by a dream last winter near the Gallows' Our blog returns with an entry from Elliot MacMillan, on the local informants who shared detailed knowledge (and dream visions) with travellers in eighteenth-century Wales curioustravellers.ac.uk/locals-who-k...

Illustration of a Cromlech on Ynys Môn / Anglesey from Richard Gough's manuscript tours of Wales

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

"Proceed two miles farther; pass under a high hill, with a precipitous front, styled Sgor-more, or, the great projection; and immediately after reach Dun-tuilm castle, or, the castle of the round grassy eminence, placed at the verge of a high precipice over the sea" Pennant's 1772 Scottish Tour

Illustration of Duntulm castle, Skye, by Moses Griffith, as described in the post, projecting over the sea with cliffs and a cloudy sky in the background, from the extra-illustrated 1772 Tours of Scotland held by the National Library of Wales.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

For one of the earliest popular descriptions of Fingal's Cave and Staffa, comparing it to the Giant's Causeway ("a new giant's causeway, rising amidst the waves; but with columns of double the height of that in Ireland"), see our online chapters from Thomas Pennant's 1772 'Tour in Scotland'!

editions.curioustravellers.ac.uk

Curious Travellers editions

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UWTSDlib @uwtsdlib.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

1/3 Join Professor Mary-Ann Constantine of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Welsh naturalist and travel writer, Thomas Pennant.

A square image with a teal background. At the top there is text describing the title of the open day at the UWTSD Special Collections about Thomas Pennant. The text includes the date of the event. In the centre of the image there is an image of a title page of a Thomas Pennant book. It has the title “The Journey to Snowdon” with a block print image of a body of water with boats, and a castle in the distance below.

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UWTSDlib @uwtsdlib.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

1/3 Ymunwch â’r Athro Mary-Ann Constantine o’r Ganolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd i ddathlu 300 mlynedd ers geni’r naturiaethwr a’r awdur teithio o Gymru, Thomas Pennant.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

After giving the audience at @natlibscot.bsky.social an exclusive preview, we are delighted to share the first taste of our editions of Thomas Pennant's Scottish Tours! (Click on "Show Pennant's Tours" after following the link below) editions.curioustravellers.ac.uk/tours

A sailing ship, the 'Lady Frederick Campbell', carried Thomas Pennant and his party across the sea with a view of the mountains of Glenelg, on the western coast of Scotland, in the background

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Happy to report that we're full-up for our talks and launch in Edinburgh on Thursday, but there is a waiting list to join if you've been left disappointed!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Thomas Pennant's 300th birthday not going unnoticed in Sir y Fflint!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Any ideas about the Ladies of Llangollen's 'powdery tallow candles' much appreciated!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Join us at the National Library of Scotland (@natlibscot.bsky.social) for a presentation on Thomas Pennant and the Origins of Scottish Tourism - and the public launch of the first parts of our new online editions of Pennant's Tours! Book for free via the link, 5:30-6:30 on Thursday June 4th.

nls.uk

Thomas Pennant and the origins of Scottish tourism | National Library of Scotland

Learn about Thomas Pennant's natural history focussed tour of 1769 and the 1772 voyage to the Hebrides illustrated by images from artist Moses Griffith.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Join us in @librarywales.bsky.social to celebrate Aberystwyth as Wales's first City of Literature: Underscapes (March 12th, 1:30-6pm) An afternoon of creative and historical presentations discussing peatlands, mining, and soil. Please register for free by Monday, 9 March (a.elias@cymru.ac.uk).

Picture of an underground passage, credit to Ioan Lord.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Ymunwch â ni yn @librarywales.bsky.social i ddathlu Aberystwyth fel Dinas Llên gyntaf Cymru: Tirweddau Tanddaearol (Mawrth 12fed, 1:30-6yh) Prynhawn o gyflwyniadau creadigol a hanesyddol yn trafod mawn, mwyngloddio, a phridd. Cofrestru erbyn Llun, 9 Mawrth (a.elias@cymru.ac.uk).

Llun o dramwyfa danddaearol gan Ioan Lord.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Sign up to hear one of our tour editors, Elizabeth Edwards, talk about queerness, Welsh tourism, and the Ladies of Llangollen! (Hybrid online/in-person session)

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Best wishes for the holidays from Curious Travellers 2! curioustravellers.ac.uk/newyddion-ne...

Nadolig Llawen! Merry Christmas! Nollaig Chridheil! from the Curious Travellers.

We’ve been from Selborne to Skye, unlocked images and taken a deep dive into the Pennant Collections at the Natural History Museum. Read all about it by following the link

Thanks for all your support. Wishing you a peaceful and restorative break.

Image: illustrated Scallop shell, from an extra-illustrated copy of Thomas Pennant’s British Zoology (courtesy of Arader Gallery, New York)

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

A conference report for our exhilarating 'Curious Collections' day at the Natural History Museum (@nhm-london.bsky.social) curioustravellers.ac.uk/conference-r...

A man in a grey jacket points at antique books as a crowd looks on with interest

A large serrated fossil shark's tooth rests on the palm of a hand, almost filling it

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Yn falch ein bod wedi cydweithio gydag artistiaid yn yr arddangosfa hon, sy'n agor yn swyddogol heddiw yn Aberystwyth! / Very glad to have collaborated with artists in this exhibition, which officially opens today in Aberystwyth!

Poster for the art/science collaborative project 'On the Seashore', 10 November - 8 February, with a private view at 6pm on November 15th 2026

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Stephanie Holt @stephholtnh.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

I had no chance to post about Friday’s fantastic Curious Collections conference for @curioustravellers.bsky.social, but suffice to say these chairs were full as we welcomed nearly 60 guests to @nhm-london.bsky.social for a packed programme on Thomas Pennant and the work (and future🤞) of the project.

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cathaguamia.bsky.social @cathaguamia.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

The importance of the owl in Welsh tradition @mxfrankduffy.bsky.social

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

For our first talk today, Alex Deans from @uofglasgow.bsky.social tells us about Thomas Pennants rather disappointed reaction to Caithness in 1769 - an "immense morass", though at least with "a few rows of tolerable trees" (!)

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Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd / CAWCS @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

A conference in London on 7 November explores the scientific legacy of Thomas Pennant (1726–1798) from Holywell, Flintshire - an internationally renowned naturalist whose specimens form a core part of the Natural History Museum’s collections. Read more here: www.uwtsd.ac.uk/news/confere...

uwtsd.ac.uk

Conference Reveals Welsh Naturalist’s Major Contributions to London’s Natural History Museum

The upcoming ‘Curious Collections’ conference at the Natural History Museum, London (November 7th) will shed new light on one of the oldest collections in the museum’s archives and explore the scienti...

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

"Pennant’s great auk reflects...a paradigm shift precipitated by the realisation that a species could vanish; and therefore that a ‘resource’ could in fact become exhausted and disappear altogether" Artist Sean Harris on extinction and animation for our blog curioustravellers.ac.uk/curating-the...

A sequence of upright great auks, a black and white bird depicted in silhouette, are projected within eggs in a darkened room

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Claire Connolly @claireconnolly.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Too busy having fun to post - and @gillianobrien.bsky.social took better pics in any case - but great to catch up with @curioustravellers.bsky.social and other colleagues in North Wales last week #plasnewydd #llangollen #wales #research #ladiesofllangollen #HolyheadRoad

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Come join us at @nhm-london.bsky.social on November 7th for a day conference on the connections between natural history collections and enlightenment travel writing. For more information, programme and registration details, follow the link! curioustravellers.ac.uk/curious-coll...

Curious Collections: Day Conference at the Natural History Museum

Curious Travellers is a collaboration between the University of Wales Trinity St David, the University of Glasgow and the Natural History Museum, London, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It studies the world of C18th travel and natural history through the works of Flintshire naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), whose multi-volume British Zoology, and Tours of Wales and Scotland helped shape public understanding of the habitats, cultures and histories of the British Isles. We are
currently preparing digital editions of the Welsh and Scottish Tours and examining the valuable Pennant collections held at NHM. On Friday 7th November we are holding a day conference in the Natural History Museum exploring the connections between Pennant’s writings, the art-works he commissioned, his vast correspondence network and his specimen collections. We would like this to be a springboard for future cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaborations, so please join us for an invigorating day of presentations and discussions!

Places are limited so please book by 30 October: a.elias@cymru.ac.uk (01970 636543)

Short papers from the Curious Travellers research team and NHM curators, pairing specimens and archive material with
research stories drawing on Pennant’s correspondence, travel writing and commissioned art-works.

A session exploring intersections between natural science, cultural history and the digital humanities.
A chance to see specimens from the Pennant Collection with items from Library and Archives, to talk to the
team, and to see panels and creative work from the recent Curious Minds exhibition held in Selborne.
A Future Directions panel exploring strategies for research development.
Free lunch and a drinks reception (5.30pm-6.30pm).

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Stephanie Holt @stephholtnh.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Back to history today and a lecture for the Oxford History Faculty Environmental Humanities group on @curioustravellers.bsky.social and our Curious Minds: Thomas Pennant and Gilbert White exhibition. #HistoricalResearch #DigitalHumanities #ThomasPennanr #GilbertWhite @ox.ac.uk

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Eleanor @eleanor-19thc.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Thoroughly enjoyed attending @curioustravellers.bsky.social ECR Day yesterday. Enjoyed listening to some amazing and thought provoking papers and presenting on Maria Graham’s South American travel writing

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Two members of the Curious Travellers team will be launching books including Thomas Pennant at the Gorwelion Conference this week!

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sophie | PhD student @sophiecairns.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Very excited and grateful to have been given the chance to present at the ‘Journeys of Curiosity’ symposium, where I’ll be chatting a bit about curiosity, the sublime, and imperial anxieties in Romantic travel accounts of the Himalayas. Really looking forward to hearing all the other papers as well!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Curious Travellers are delighted to be partnering with the long-running Liverpool Travel Seminar to host an Early Career Symposium dedicated to ‘Journeys of Curiosity’ Bluecoat, Liverpool, 25/09. Free (including lunch), registration by September 19th curioustravellers.ac.uk/journeys-of-...

curioustravellers.ac.uk

‘Journeys of Curiosity’ Early Career Symposium – 25/09/2025 | Curious Travellers

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Thomas Pennant's writings shed light on Welsh aspects of this "workhouse-plantation nexus" - in the Greenfield Valley in north east Wales, Pennant gives a whitewashed account of the conditions of child labourers, sent from distant parishes to work in the plantation-supplied cotton mills of Holywell

Pennant, who leased land to one of the Greenfield companies and was himself an entrepreneur with mining interests in the area,46 devotes a full page in the History of the Parishes of Holywell and Whiteford (1796) to the excellent work and living conditions of the 400 children working for the Holywell Cotton Twist company. They have clean, whitewashed, and ventilated purpose-built accommodation; a good dinner of soup, beef, pork, or herrings and potatoes, milk, bread, and porridge; access to a doctor; and regular Sunday school. This information, he notes, comes directly from ‘one of the partners’, Mr Christopher Smalley, the eldest son of the late founder. Mention of the factory in a recent study of child labour, however, suggests that this may not have been the whole story. In 1792 an agent to the Holywell cotton mills had to explain to the parish board of St Clement Danes in London (which had supplied the child workers): ‘that of the children bound to that company, seven out of nine had run away. He admitted that they were worked from 7 in the evening to 6 in the morning that they were not relieved during the night’. The common practice of factories sourcing children from distant parishes adds another thread to this story of interconnected dislocations.

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Edwin Rose @edwinrose.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Had a wonderful visit to @nhm-london.bsky.social Tring last week to examine some of the bird collection compiled by the naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726-98) - a very rare surviving 18th century ornithological collection. @curioustravellers.bsky.social

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

In a new entry on our research blog, Glasgow's Alex Deans reflects on how Thomas Pennant's tours of Scotland are haunted by absent, ancient trees - and the possibility of enlightened reforestation curioustravellers.ac.uk/thomas-penna...

Monochrome illustration of a huge, split yew tree, with two leafy outgrowths on each side of a rent and serrated trunk. Subtitled "Yew tree at Fortingal".

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Read our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's blogpost 'Black Country Blues: A Welsh Bard Walking', on bardic radical Iolo Morganwg's (rather testy) encounter with the Industrial Revolution at Ironbridge writingindustry.leeds.ac.uk/essays/black...

Wash/watercolour image of the bridge at Ironbridge in 1785, the metal structure in hazy colours played across boats on a river

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Join some of our Curious Travellers team at the FREE Early Career symposium "Journeys of Curiosity", in Liverpool on 25th September 2025. Propose your papers by 15th August!

Poster image for "Journeys of Curiosity" Early Career One-Day Symposium, Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX, 25 September 2025: Free Event
Shows a Romantic-era illustration of the "New Bridge and Aqueduct, Rhiwabon"

The Liverpool Travel Seminar is a collaborative and interdisciplinary research forum launched jointly
by Liverpool Hope University, the University of Liverpool, and Liverpool John Moores University in
2007. It provides a constructive environment in which colleagues with interests in travel and travel
writing discuss the latest developments in their fields and reflect on future directions. The Seminar
enables cross-institutional dialogue and research collaboration at national and international level. This
year, we are collaborating with the AHRC-funded ‘Curious Travellers’ project, a partnership between
the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS), Glasgow University
and the Natural History Museum, London. Curious Travellers explores C18th-C19th travel writing,
creating digital editions of previously unpublished tours of Wales and Scotland, and focusing on the
journeys of naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798).

We invite PhD candidates and early-career scholars working in the fields of travel and travel writing to
share their own journeys of curiosity. The event is free to attend and limited funding for bursaries is
available. We welcome papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks, cultural
contexts and historical periods. Papers can be either 10 or 20 minutes: please send enquiries and
abstracts of 300 words and a bio of 150 words to the conference organisers: mary-ann.constantine@cymru.ac.uk and e.edwards@wales.ac.uk by 15 August 2025.

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Stephanie Holt @stephholtnh.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

And just like that our exhibition Curious Minds: Thomas Pennant and Gilbert White is over 🥲. I’ve loved the whole process of exhibition design, installation, and events, and I’m so proud of what we created for @curioustravellers.bsky.social

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Still time to register to see this talk by @edwinrose.bsky.social! Either online or in person at the National Library of Wales (@librarywales.bsky.social) www.library.wales/visit/things...

Poster for an event held online and in the National Library of Wales today (Tuesday June 11th): Dr Edwin Rose, "Reading the World: Thomas Pennant and the Practices of Natural History"

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Two books coming out this summer from the Curious Travellers team! 1) Yn gyntaf, llyfr newydd Ffion Mair Jones (@ffionmjones.bsky.social) ar gysylltiadau Cymreig Thomas Pennant (Awst 2025, @gwasgprifcymru.bsky.social) www.uwp.co.uk/book/thomas-...

uwp.co.uk

Thomas Pennant | UWP

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

A wonderful, glowing review (by travel writer Julie Brominicks) of our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's recent book on Romantic-era Welsh tourism Order it to your libraries!

Two centuries ago they came in their multitudes, on horse on foot and by boat. Enquiring, measuring, painting, thinking, writing, drawing, and map-making. Crawling into coal mining huts. Falling off waterfalls. Motivated by scenery or science, they carried sketchbooks or magnifying glasses, scrutinized rocks and plants, and Welsh language and customs too.

Mary-Ann Constantine has unearthed 162 published tours from this period and a further 470 accounts in manuscript form, 17% of which are by women. These writings reanimate the landscape their authors saw, and by turn I see them more clearly; my peers of two centuries ago.

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Calling all artistic sleuths on Bluesky - if you know anything about the missing paintings from the home of Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant pictured here, please get in touch with @edwinrose.bsky.social!

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Mary-Ann Constantine kicks off the first of our two Curious Travellers panels today at Gilbert White's House in Selborne (@gilbertwhites.bsky.social)

A woman stands at a wooden lectern in a converted barn, in front of a PowerPoint slide showing a crab and other natural history specimens

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

"fossil fish, a collection of graptolites, trilobites, a bear jaw..." In our new research blog, @stephholtnh.bsky.social gives us a rare hands-on look at Thomas Pennant's specimens in the British Museum curioustravellers.ac.uk/enlightening...

A row of three connected wooden cabinets, with glass panels, the lids open in a wood floored library

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Come join us! There'll be strong presence from the Curious Travellers team.

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Stephanie Holt @stephholtnh.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Day 2 of #NatSCA2025 @natsca.bsky.social is up and running! I’m speaking later on behalf of @curioustravellers.bsky.social and the @nhm-london.bsky.social Thomas Pennant Collections #HistoryOfNaturalHistory #NaturalHistoryMuseums

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Curious Travellers @curioustravellers.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

For our April research blog, Mary-Ann Constantine takes us on a tour beneath north-east Wales 'The ‘Subterraneous Lottery’; Or; Flintshire Exposed.' curioustravellers.ac.uk/the-subterra...

A cross-section of geological strata, illustrated in brightly coloured strips and arranged/labelled by altitude, with place names like 'Snowdon' and 'Wrexham' attached.

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