Our monthly zoom talks have moved to Friday and will start at the earlier time of 7.30pm (doors open at 7.15pm). The first talk of the season will be on Friday 17th October so put the date in your diary.

Chris Finch has been able to arrange a visit to a quarry in the Mendips but at short notice. See the Members’ page for more details.

The cabinets belonged to the late John Sheppard and I am helping his brother to disperse his collection and associated mineral stuff. Please send on to any of your mineral contacts who might be interested. These are nice solid units. The real issue is the ‘buyer’ will need a van. I don’t think they will go in any sort of estate car- Roy Starkey

See photos and dimensions

The Minutes of the 2025 AGM held in Penrith are now available by a link from the Members’ page.

Some changes to the constitution were agreed at the AGM and the revised constitution can be found on the appropriate page accessed by the dropdown menu from “About” on the menu bar.

Our last Zoom talk, which promises to be very interesting is by Dr Mike Simms who is Curator of Geology at the National Museums of Northern Ireland:

Meteorites: Messengers from the Solar System

Billions are spent sending people and machines to examine other worlds in our Solar System, yet we have samples from more than 100 of these worlds that arrived here for free. They are meteorites. Most are from asteroids, remnants of planetesimals that no longer exist as intact entities, and they can tell us about the formation and early history of our Solar System. Some are from the Moon or Mars and augment the information obtained by astronauts and robots. Most meteorites are composed of familiar minerals, although often in a form or context not found on Earth, with just a few minerals known only from meteorites. This talk will provide an overview of the different types of meteorites, the minerals that they contain, how they formed, and what they can tell us about the Solar System beyond our own planet.

Joining instructions are provided for Members on the Members page. Non-members are welcome to attend and should contact the membership secretary for details.

Readers of MBI2 may find it useful to refer to maps which show the most important mineral localities. These revised maps derived from MBI 2008 (courtesy of Liverpool University Press) are now available on the website under the Publications dropdown. The same page gives access to an amazing set of 3D images of many specimens that are illustrated in the book.

Tom Cotterell recently gave an excellent talk to The Society titled- Philip Rashleigh’s collection of minerals and its unique importance for researching the early history of copper arsenates from Cornwall. This was recorded and can be viewed by members using a link in the Virtual Talks section of the Members’ Page. The link will be available until the end of April.

Southern branch are hosting a zoom talk at 7.30pm on Friday 21st March by Colleen Thomson on Greenlaws Mine: The Forgotten Treasure of Weardale and the Recent discoveries. Please contact David Aubrey-Jones, if you have not already had an invite.

Could members please read the document relating to Personal Safety Equipment on the Safety webpage as this has been significantly revised, to bring it in line with current safety standards. All other guidance documents have been reviewed and headers and footers updated, without further changes.

The full programme for this season is now listed on the Members’ page.

Our next talk on the 8th January is “Mineral Hunting in the Swiss Alps” by Dr Andreas Stucki of Siber + Siber in Zurich. Members may be familiar with Andreas through BlueCap Production’s many interviews of key people in the mineral world, which can all be found on YouTube.