Both the March 2026 Newsletter and the Junior Magazine have just been released and are excellent reads. The Junior Magazine can be found from the link on the home page and members can download the Society Newsletter from the Members’ page.

Our speaker this Friday will be Karen Hudson-Edwards, Professor in Sustainable Mining at the Camborne School of Mines and Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter. She will be talking on Mine Wastes: Environmental Liability or Valuable Resource? Please visit the members page to log-in; the waiting room will open at 19.15.

The latest copy of the journal is now with the printers but if you are impatient to read it you will find a digital copy available to members on the Members’ Page.

You will also find the Field Trip programme for the next quarter. The first trip is on the 7th March so do not delay in signing up. The list is not complete and more will be added when the Field Trip Co-ordinators have finalised details.

The ASM next year will run from the 13th to the 15th March at Exeter Hall in Kidlington near Oxford. Some members may recognise this as the venue for the Oxford Mineral & Fossil Shows and delegates will be able to attend the show on the Sunday. Optional trips on Friday will be hosted by the Oxford Museum of Natural History and the Natural History Museum, London. More details will be circulated when the full programme is in place.

The date of Roger Bade’s talk is now Wednesday 19th November

Due to unforeseen circumstances it has been necessary to change the date of Courtenay Smale’s talk which will now be on Friday 31st October at 7.30pm.

The programme of virtual talks for the coming season is now on the members’ page. The first is on Friday 17th October when Courtenay Smale will give a talk entitled “The Williams Collection at Caerhays Castle”. As usual the link to log into the talk will appear on the members’ page a few days before.

For those who have attended the Southern Branch Symposium at the Somerset Earth Science Centre you will be aware of the annual event they organise – “Mendip Rocks”. This includes a number of workshops and field trips which take place between 1st to 25th October all of which are open to the public but must be prebooked.

This year they have a very wide range of geological based trips organised, including a few quarries we have not visited for many years.

If you are interested then the link below takes you their full offerings:

https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/mendip-rocks-2025-4600963

and many more………

By Dr David Aubrey-Jones

It was a real privilege to be able to present Dr Austin Woodbridge with the prestigious Russell Society medal at a small presentation ceremony at the Natural History Museum on Monday 16th June.  The museum was thrilled and had laid on a special room and refreshments, with other volunteers and some museum staff in attendance (see photos).  The medal is awarded for outstanding services to Mineralogy and was last given in 2021

Austin started working at the museum as a volunteer on 17th of April 2002.  He was given the huge task of identifying, tracing, and curating specimens from the famous Ludlam collection which had been dispersed to various parts of the museum / storage when new galleries and exhibitions were developed in the 1980s.  Austin was helped initially by the late John Crocker (for 18 years), and more recently by other volunteers (Susan Tyzack, Nick Hawes and Michael Dunmore), with advice from Alan Hart, Peter Tandy, Mike Rumsey and Robin Hansen.  During this time, he has shown incredible commitment, working faithfully on the task for one or two days a week and has now been volunteering at the museum for an incredible 23 years. 

Henry Ludlam amassed his wonderful collection while working as a hosier, and upon his death in June 1880, bequeathed his collection to the Museum of Practical Geology.  The quality of the specimens in the collection is superb and was regarded at the time as “the most complete and probably the finest collection of minerals ever made by a private collector” (Davies 1881).

Austen is an example to us all, through his contribution to British mineralogy in carefully curating and reconstituting the wonderful Ludlam collection for the past 23 years.  The medal is very well deserved – well done Austin!