Festival of Geology
Saturday 1st November 2025
Geologists’ Association (GA) Festival of Geology
This one-day event is always enjoyable as it now takes place in the splendid surroundings of the Geological Society in Burlington House, London. Local GA groups, commercial sellers of rocks and minerals, booksellers and a few other organisations set up tables in several rooms throughout the building and there are lectures throughout the day. The Quekett had a splendid position in the upper library, close to the window overlooking Fortnum & Mason! The table allocated was quite small and with limited access to the centre of London, Stephen Parker and Pam Hamer set up a modest petrologically-themed display. Stephen hefted his Vickers polarising microscope with an assortment of geological thin-section slides, while Pam took an easy way out with a simple stereomicroscope with a home-made transmitted-light polarising system and a small digital microscope. The aim of the latter was to show people that it is possibly to start looking at geological specimens with simple equipment.
The rooms were crowded throughout the day and it was good to have a number of children visiting with their parents. They seemed to appreciate the ability to handle both the microscopes and slides themselves. As might be expected, there were quite a lot of knowledgeable petrologists showing lots of enthusiasm for the specimens. We briefly chatted to several Club members, most of them well-known to us though there were a couple of people who said they were members but not active in the Club. One person wanted to join the Club there and then!
The children’s section of the GA is called ‘Rockwatch’ and a room was set aside for them with Adrian Rundle helping them identify, pick and mount foraminifera. Rockwatch also provide ‘Rock Boxes’ to schools with hand specimens of rocks and fossils to investigate. Aside from that we noticed displays by the Natural History Museum and by the group promoting the Cross Channel Geopark. We also chatted to Anne Barratt, our speaker for the following Club lecture. During the day there were three lectures ‘The early evolution of animal life’, ‘The secret lives of dinosaurs’ and ‘How to build a Jurassic coastline’. We were so busy we weren’t able to go to these but we hope they have been recorded. The ‘Rock Showman’ provided some fun.
Our display showing Fortnum & Mason through the window
Looking into the library from our display table
Report and photographs by Pam Hamer