Rockpools and trilobites

After rocks, fossils and wriggly creatures

our day at the National Stone Centre

we don’t know if there were hammerheads all those years ago…but there could have been!

completing a crinoid

Fossils to hold, investigate and draw, a sheet to fill in, or new sheets of paper for your own drawings. There were plastic models of what the organisms who we meet as fossils might have looked like “why is this shark pink?”, “this one’s got lots of legs”,  “Someone thought it might be…”, “Is there a better colour for a prehistoric shark, do you think?”, “Hmmmm….”

Our fossils collections were mostly of Carboniferous Limestone animals: the sorts of  creature who might have been swimming in the sea 290 million years ago that eventually gave us the limestone of the White Peak. No, we had no dinosaurs. We had no giant sea-reptiles or winged pterosaurs. But we did have goniatites and crinoids and the last of the trilobites. There were giant fish in our seas swimming over the coral reefs that would one day raise the spiky peaks of Chrome and Park House Hills

We made prehistoric ecologies on our fingers ( see idea below)

We even made some prehistoric rock pools for a walk along an ancient shore…..

Our next Derwent Stories event will be Butterflies, bumbles and picnics  on Monday 6^th August in Darley Park in Derby

 

stroll along an ancient beach, look in an ancient rockpool

 

On our fossils day…..

Where did we go:

The National Stone Centre just outside Wirksworth. Postcode: DE4 4LS

Tripadvisor: what do other people think?

taking time with a coelacanth

What did we do:

there are walks round the site where you can see fossils in beds of rock and the bigger patterns caused by ancient seas and sand in the old quarry walls. There is lots to see and touch but they do not like people taking things away from the site or damaging their rocks (so don’t turn up with a geological hammer!)

Other activities: you can go “panning for gold” with bowls full of sand and small polished gems. The aim is to wash the sand out (big troughs of nice cool water outside for this) and find your treasures

See below for one of the activities we brought with us

Costs: there is a £1 honesty box for car parking. Otherwise access to the site is free

Toilets: in the main building, including accessible toilet. We’re not sure about changing table

Café: good selection of lunches, cakes and ice creams and nice places to sit*

Busy-ness: we were there on a sunny day at the start of the school holidays and there were always people around but not so busy that it felt crowded and noisy

Recommended: for people who like finding things out and looking at things and people who like having a bit of room

* We thought some site-specific ice creams might be good…“rare gem”– with shiny sweets in, or maybe sandstone (with caramel fragments), or even fossil ice cream with sugar shrimps…..

Derwent Stories events: after each of our DS events, we’ll post a report like this on what we did,

and where we went in the hope that other people might visit that place themselves.

We will also post instructions to try some of the activities we did as well.

 

In this blog there are finger puppet trilobites….make your own ancient rockpool and an invitation to try the Carboniferous Fossil Poem will follow shortly!

Derwent Stories

With support from Derwentwise and Foundation Derbyshire,

Stone and Water are running a series of public events in 2018 across the Derwentwise area.

All the Derwent Stories events are open to anyone but are planned for and

structured around families including children with additional needs

Fingerpuppet trilobites

You will need: a postcard-sized piece of thin card, pencil, coloured pencils, a pair of scissors, a small stapler

half a trilobite, folded card

These can start with either a drawing like the one above or half a drawing, drawn onto a piece of folded card with the fold corresponding to the main line of the cross

Cut it out, cut a line in from the edge to the side of the eye (the longer the better usually). Fold the cephalon (head) along this line, folding front over the sides. Staple in place. This will pull the head into a nice curve and the original fold will help shape the rest of the animal.

Add a ring of card to the underside, slide the puppet onto your finger and off you go! (Why not make one for every finger and have a family of them?). Use similar ideas to make other animals…look at their symmetry and overall shape: some work well with folded card (use the fold as the line through the middle of the animal to get symmetrical sides) while others are easier as simple drawings cut out and put on a finger ring

 

 

 

 

finished trilobites

 

 

 

 

 

fingers full of coelacanths

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Butterflies, bumbles and picnics

Butterflies, bumbles

and picnics

 

Monday 6^th August 2018

Darley Park, Derby

 

 

The Derwent Stories project has got off to an old stones and fossils start with a lively day at the National Stone Centre last week (pictures and report to follow soon!). The next event will be a day of picnics and wildlife wanderings in Derby….

 

Event: Butterflies, bumbles

and picnics

 

When: Monday 6^th August 2018

Times:we’ll be around 11am – 4pm, so choose a time within that and come and join us. Activities will happen as people are ready for them (see below) – latest time for new arrivals is 3pm

Where: Darley Park, Derby

How to find us: we are aiming to base ourselves in the Butterfly Garden or on the lawns hear the Café so head for the Darley Abbey Park Tearooms. For parking, try the car park on Darley St, DE22 1DX

what will you find?

 Our plan is for a relaxed day looking at the flowers and insects of the Park. There will be a bumblebee and butterfly survey to try. You can listen to wildlife stories and add your own, and help us make up some completely new ones. There will be wildlife walks and chances to draw, sketch, scribble and print the animals and plants we find.

Bring a picnic to extend your visit and enjoy open spaces, old trees and room to run and roll

Like all the Derwent Stories events,  Butterflies, bumbles and picnics is open to anyone but is planned for and structured around families including children with additional needs

The Derwent Stories project is put together with help from Umbrella, Derwentwise and Derby Parks. Stone and Water is happy to acknowledge grant aid from Foundation Derbyshire  and Derwentwise

ready for action…

a house with long-bone fences

Lost Stories of Buxton

Thursday 19th July
Buxton Library
an event as part of Buxton Festival Fringe

the strangest street in Macclesfield (we weren’t sure we wanted it in Buxton!)

There were silly stories and horrible stories and slightly sticky stories involving marshmallows….
There were ideas about unicorns and ice cream

The city of the Gorgs sheltered in a mountain

While the Gorgs live in an underground city,
With a cold water supply from the mountain
Where a network of trees
Feeds energy to the city.
There under that mountain,
The aliens live, secret and safe
Waiting for the Doctor and a visit from the Tardis.

In the morning we had casual visitors, drifting in and being netted by our pens and glue and excitement and mess. After lunch the lovely Drama Club from The Rossendale Trust in Macclesfield and everything got even stranger with…..

practising cackles

A spooky house with long-bone fences
Where Rupert’s brothers are trapped
While he laughs his most sinister laugh.

The strangest street in the world
(or at least in Macc):
Adam’s graveyard,
Ann’s farm house,
A purple castle,
A haunted house with a burning roof
Whence everyone is trying to escape.

 

With many thanks to all our artists and storytellers,

to Buxton Festival fringe for encouraging the event

and to Buxton Library for hosting it!

This event was supported by The Bingham Trust

 

a bear waits in a beautiful wood

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a sea of grasshopper sound

sinking into a sea of grasshopper sound

National Meadows Day

6th July 2018

National Meadow Day (Saturday 6th July) found the Stone and Water team loitering in the dry but beautiful meadows of the Upper Dove Valley, revelling in the sweep of grass, sudden flutters of butterflies and swallows flickering overhead. In a partnership with with the Dove Valley Centre, South West Peak’s Glorious Grasslands project and Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s BM125 project, our Summer Excitements! project got off to a hot and flowery start

During the day, there were meadow walks and river dipping, insect drawing and book-building, time to talk and sit and enjoy the atmosphere of an ancient meadow under the wide skies in that peaceful valley.

Our Summer Excitements! project will see events running through the South West Peak area. Other event themes will include old buildings, local wildlife and the value of picnics. Other Excitements! events can be found here

Meadows are part of our agricultural heritage as much as any old farm tools or buildings or ancient farmers. Their use, management, decline and recognition reflect our own awareness of the importance of our agricultural landscapes. You may find old scythes and seed drills in a museum, you may even find a toothless ol’ farmhand, but a meadow needs the earth beneath its roots and the weather that ruffles the grasses. You won’t find a meadow in a museum and they cannot be collected. They can be protected, grown and valued as places where history, culture and wildlife coincide. As well as experiencing the meadow for themselves we invited visitors to think, reflect and record their thoughts about the importance of such places both to themselves as individuals and within the landscape.

Those reflections became lines within a poem growing out of a hot, dusty afternoon among the grass stalks…..

 

 

We sink
Into a field rustling and bustling with life,
Into the froth of grass,
Into a sea of grasshopper sound,
A dream where nothing changes.
The cows sleeping under a willow
Have been resting there for centuries.

trees hold the edge of the meadow

Memories are rooted in these meadows,
In the fleeting lives of butterflies,
In nodding seedheads,
In thistledown drifting on a hot breeze.
Farms, families, paths, tools and stories,
All knitted to the earth as tightly as the turf.
Childhood holidays rooted here too,
New names, first meetings,
Stonechats, curlews, those grasshoppers again.

The rhythm of a scythe echoes across centuries
They walked where we walk,
Those old farmers on a summer day,
The slice and hiss of a blade and
The whetstone that hones the edge,
Finding shade under these same trees,
Cutting the waving grass from the same sward.

Harebell and cranesbill
Selfheal and tormentil,
Scabious and burnet,
The names are an enchantment
A spell for a meadow,
Whispered on a dusty wind
Colour, scent, pollen and promise,

Foxtail, cocksfoot,
Fescue, vernal and bent
The rooted and the free
Meadow brown and large white
Ringlet and tortoiseshell,
Prayers between earth and sky.

Futures are rooted in this rare and ancient place,
Still growing memories
Having fun in the river, catching insects,
A diving beetle!

Knapweed and burnet nod purple heads
Studding the rippling ribbons of colour
Black medick nods, yellow heads in the hot dry grass.
Seeds of the future in a rare and ancient place,
Lose the meadow and the memories wither too,
The cows across the field will sleep only in the present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SNIPPETS
And here is a set of small pieces that didn’t quite fit into the larger poem

1. Bumblebees embroider the meadow
Knotting threads with flight paths
Charting by pollen, by nectar, colour coding
Scent-coding, the maps of their lives.

2. Yellow rattle whispers,
Dry and sandy,
Small bones in a bag,
A snake’s angry warning.

3. Bony fingers in the tops of the ash trees
Point a warning to the future

4. Falling sky splinters
Into scabious and cornflower blue,
While tormentil nestles in the grass,
Droplets of sunshine on the green

5. The promise of memories to grow with the hay
The dread of fields empty of hope

 

With many thanks to all our hay meadow artists and poets

and our partners on this rewarding day

Stone and Water thanks South West Peak

and The Bingham Trust for their support

mermaid tide runs in

This gallery contains 15 photos.

Mermaids and sea monsters Tiny! 2018 “The event was a lovely addition to a sunny weekend in the Pavilion gardens.” Fringe Review (see the full review and lots of others, here) There were mermaids. there were sharks. There were a few jellyfish. But mostly, there were mermaids….

Summer excitements!

Laughter, buzzards, buildings and fun

A season of family events

From fabulous buildings to amazing creatures, from wide skies and rolling clouds to blizzards, rain and vanishing rivers, we’ll be celebrating the wonderful world of the South West Peak. Picking up on themes around wildlife, history, buildings and people, these events will invite participants to think about their homes, explore a bit, find fossils in walls, butterflies in hedgerows, who knows what or where

We have 8 days of activity planned. Some places are stand-alone events. At others, we’ll invite participants to also propose ideas for a future winter event – maybe we should make lanterns of the houses in your village, maybe have a cosy storytelling session, maybe we should make kites of local birds…We also have 1 “emergency excitement” day for the summer when someone or somewhere within the South West Peak could come to us and say “could you come and do something here please?” – no guarantees, but do get in touch! (stoneandwater@btinternet.com)

These events are free

• No booking is needed – just come along and join in
• Children under 8 need to bring a grown-up with them
• Each day will offer a mix of storytelling and art activities around different themes

JULY

Saturday 7^th

Dove Valley Meadows Meander

Dove Valley Centre, SK17 0PR

12 – 4

Art, stories and exploring the beautiful meadows of the Dove valley

lost castle from Warslow, maybe?

AUGUST

Wednesday 15^th

The lost castles of the moorlands

Warslow Village Hall

10 – 12, 1- 3

Haunted houses and lost castles: the buildings of the Moorlands – make your own strange or mysterious, wild, weird or wonderful house!

 

Tuesday 21^st

Wild beasts and fabulous flowers

St Bartholomew’s School playing field, Longnor

10 – 12, 1 – 3

Bees, flowers, butterflies and wildlife: fill your fingers with a field full of creatures

 

Wednesday 29^th (August)

Details to be confirmed (see contact below)

Taxal: event planned beside St James’ church: check for details

10 – 12, 1- 3

Tasty, crunchy, juicy…and is there a story, too?

 

OCTOBER

Sunday 14^th

Apple Day

Dove Valley Centre, SK17 0PR

(times to be confirmed)

An orchard full of puppet people!

For more information, look at

Stone and Water facebook page

Stone and Water blog: https://stoneandwaterblog.wordpress.com/

Email: stoneandwater@btinternet.com

 

Emergency excitement event! We have a day available to a community or community group in the South West Peak area for sometime in August or September: we will bring activities if you can offer a space and an opportunity open to anyone. Talk to Gordon or Sarah at our email address or at an event

The Summer Excitements programme is supported by South West Peak and the Bingham Trust

Goldsitch Moss holds memories, stories and precious wildlife

Festival Fringe excitements, July 2018

The Tiny! Tide rolls in again!

cheerful shark

For the umpteenth time (we’ve lost track of how many Tiny! Days we’ve had), a Tiny! Event will cheerfully frolic its way into the Pavilion Gardens for some Tiny! fun. We are also involved in the Lost Stories event on 19^th and the Buxton Pride Picnic on 21^st (separate entry following)

 

On Tiny! Days we aim to make “nothing bigger than your hand” (more or less) and this year, we invite you to join us in making a whole underwater world. Mermaids and monsters, sharks, dolphins and seahorses: who knows what will be wriggling in our seaweed?

We’ll make fabulous finger-mermaids, ferocious thumb-lobsters and finger squid, hand-horrors and small sea horses…..

 

We’ll bring materials and a submarine landscape waiting for inhabitants (but you get to keep your own ones)

 

Date: Sunday 15^th July

Place: Pavilion Gardens next to the small children’s playground (look for our events shelter, the fluttering fish and the crochet coral reef in the middle of the tent….Pavilion Gardens, St John’s Rd, Buxton, SK17 6BE

Times: 11 – 3 with us having a bit of a break somewhere in that for lunch

Costs: nothing at all but we would like a smile!

Materials: we’ll provide the bits, you provide the fingers

Grown-ups: adults are welcome and children under 7 need to bring a grown-up with them anyway

 

A Buxton Festival Fringe event

 

Lost Stories of Buxton

Date: Thursday 19^th July

Place: Buxton Library, Kents Bank Rd, Buxton, SK17 9HW

Sessions: 10.30 – 12.30, 1.30 – 3.30

Buxton secrets: help us invent the lost stories of Buxton. Storyteller Gordon MacLellan (Creeping Toad) will be there for a morning (or afternoon) of secret passages, treasures, ghosts and adventures. Hear old stories and make up new ones, turning stories into storycastles and wonderwoods.

Costs: nothing, the event is free

Booking: no tickets needed, just drop by and join in

Bits and pieces: we’ll provide the materials

Grown-ups: adults are welcome and children under 7 need to bring a grown-up with them anyway

 

Another Buxton Festival Fringe event!

 

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