Tempest's Volcano Trail Liam Herringshaw and Rebecca Williams
Event details
Follow in the pioneering footsteps of Tempest Anderson (1846-1913) as Tempest's Volcano Trail brings accessible urban volcanology to the historic streets of York.
Our city centre walk is led by volcanologist Rebecca Williams, author of Volcanoes: Ten Things You Should Know and geologist Liam Herringshaw. Join them to find out about volcanologist Anderson’s life and work, and spot volcanic rocks on the city streets and discuss their explosive origins.
Our event marks the launch of Tempest’s Volcano Trail, developed by Rebecca and Liam as part of the VolcaniCity project thanks to funding from the Curry Fund of the Geologists' Association.
York is not an obviously volcanic city, but it was the home of trailblazing volcanologist Anderson, whose photographs and publications provided some of the first detailed scientific descriptions of how volcanoes worked. Furthermore, the city’s historic streets - visited by over 9m tourists a year - contain many igneous building stones and cobbles that can be used to introduce and illustrate different volcanic processes. The rocks include ignimbrites, porphyritic andesites and columnar basalts.
Together with Sarah King, Curator of Natural Sciences at the Yorkshire Museum, Rebecca and Liam have teamed up to identify the best volcanic rocks on the city streets, explore the life and work of Anderson and produce Tempest’s Volcano Trail. This city centre walk, which can be expert-led or self-guided, explores the legacy of Tempest Anderson, alongside explaining how volcanoes work and why so many volcanic rocks can be found in York city centre
The guided walk will start in York Museum Gardens and finish at York Medical Society on Stonegate.
Accessibility: The route includes a small number of steps and some cobbled street surfaces, so may not be suitable for people with restricted mobility.
You may also be interested in the Tempest's Volcano Talk by Rebecca Williams on Sunday 31 May.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
About the speakers
Dr Rebecca Williams is a volcanologist at the University of Hull. Rebecca's research focuses on volcano-stratigraphy and hazardous volcanic flows, social-historical volcanology and the communication of volcano science. All this drives towards understanding how communities may be affected by volcanic eruptions past, present and future. Rebecca is a dedicated science communicator, appearing on international radio, news and television.
Dr Liam Herringshaw is a freelance palaeontologist, writer and tour guide, based in York. Liam is a Co-founder and Co-director of the Yorkshire Fossil Festival, and one of the founding trustees of Earth Science Outreach UK. This is a new charity that works to entertain, engage and educate people - especially under-served communities in the north-east of England - about their amazing Earth heritage, and how understanding our past can help improve our future.
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