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Curious Travellers
@curioustravellers.bsky.social
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‘Curious Travellers 2: Digital Editions of Thomas Pennant’s Tours of Wales and Scotland’. An AHRC-funded research project (CAWCS, University of Glasgow, Natural History Museum London)

Histories of Enlightenment Travel

https://curioustravellers.ac.uk/en/
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curioustravellers.bsky.social
Yn falch ein bod wedi cydweithio gydag artistiaid yn yr arddangosfa hon, sy'n agor yn swyddogol heddiw yn Aberystwyth! / Very glad to have collaborated with artists in this exhibition, which officially opens today in Aberystwyth!
Poster for the art/science collaborative project 'On the Seashore', 10 November - 8 February, with a private view at 6pm on November 15th 2026
November 15, 2025 at 3:01 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
A final response from Prof. Jim Second (History of Philosophy of Science @cam.ac.uk), reflecting on the nature of historical collections in natural history museums.

Many more papers that can't be detailed here, a huge thanks to our hosts at the NHM (@nhm-london.bsky.social) and all our speakers!
A man in a grey jacket gestures at a screen, on which is a picture of a shell and the title "curious collections"
November 7, 2025 at 4:18 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
In the last paper in this session, Hein Van Grouw (Senior Curator, Bird Group, NHM) investigates the possibility that the Eastern Rosella specimen donated from Pennant's collection was the type specimen described by George Shaw in 1792
A brightly coloured parrot with green blue yellow and black colouring perched on a leafy branch
November 7, 2025 at 4:09 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Now Edwin Rose (@edwinrose.bsky.social) moves on to birds, and the original bird of paradise specimen that was illustrated for the title image of Pennant's 'Indian Zoology' - now present in the museum, with starling feet attached to replace the lost originals
A title image for 'Indian Zoology' with an illustration of a framed, swooping bird of paradise arching over a hilly landscape
November 7, 2025 at 12:34 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Now Odile Kidd, artist at the NHM (@nhm-london.bsky.social), gives a fellow-artist's response to the work of Moses Griffith, the lower-class north Walian who worked as Pennant's primary illustrator
Natural history engraved plate based on an illustration by Moses Griffith, showing a "Puffin Auk" surrounded by details of beaks
November 7, 2025 at 11:42 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Followed by Liz Edwards from @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social telling us about the possibility that this illustrated owl - found by Pennant in a collection at Bryn-y-Pys - might have been one of his favourites, thanks to repeated appearances in his extra-illustrated books
Illustration of a small owl in the margins of an eighteenth century book, staring out at the viewer in profile with large yellow eyes
November 7, 2025 at 11:04 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
"Pennant’s great auk reflects...a paradigm shift precipitated by the realisation that a species could vanish; and therefore that a ‘resource’ could in fact become exhausted and disappear altogether"

Artist Sean Harris on extinction and animation for our blog

curioustravellers.ac.uk/curating-the...
A sequence of upright great auks, a black and white bird depicted in silhouette, are projected within eggs in a darkened room
October 31, 2025 at 3:07 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Come join us at @nhm-london.bsky.social on November 7th for a day conference on the connections between natural history collections and enlightenment travel writing.

For more information, programme and registration details, follow the link!

curioustravellers.ac.uk/curious-coll...
Curious Collections: Day Conference at the Natural History Museum Curious Travellers is a collaboration between the University of Wales Trinity St David, the University of Glasgow and the Natural History Museum, London, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It studies the world of C18th travel and natural history through the works of Flintshire naturalist Thomas Pennant (1726–1798), whose multi-volume British Zoology, and Tours of Wales and Scotland helped shape public understanding of the habitats, cultures and histories of the British Isles. We are currently preparing digital editions of the Welsh and Scottish Tours and examining the valuable Pennant collections held at NHM. On Friday 7th November we are holding a day conference in the Natural History Museum exploring the connections between Pennant’s writings, the art-works he commissioned, his vast correspondence network and his specimen collections. We would like this to be a springboard for future cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaborations, so please join us for an invigorating day of presentations and discussions! Places are limited so please book by 30 October: a.elias@cymru.ac.uk (01970 636543) Short papers from the Curious Travellers research team and NHM curators, pairing specimens and archive material with research stories drawing on Pennant’s correspondence, travel writing and commissioned art-works. A session exploring intersections between natural science, cultural history and the digital humanities. A chance to see specimens from the Pennant Collection with items from Library and Archives, to talk to the team, and to see panels and creative work from the recent Curious Minds exhibition held in Selborne. A Future Directions panel exploring strategies for research development. Free lunch and a drinks reception (5.30pm-6.30pm).
October 21, 2025 at 12:38 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Thomas Pennant's writings shed light on Welsh aspects of this "workhouse-plantation nexus" - in the Greenfield Valley in north east Wales, Pennant gives a whitewashed account of the conditions of child labourers, sent from distant parishes to work in the plantation-supplied cotton mills of Holywell
Pennant, who leased land to one of the Greenfield companies and was himself an entrepreneur with mining interests in the area,46 devotes a full page in the History of the Parishes of Holywell and Whiteford (1796) to the excellent work and living conditions of the 400 children working for the Holywell Cotton Twist company. They have clean, whitewashed, and ventilated purpose-built accommodation; a good dinner of soup, beef, pork, or herrings and potatoes, milk, bread, and porridge; access to a doctor; and regular Sunday school. This information, he notes, comes directly from ‘one of the partners’, Mr Christopher Smalley, the eldest son of the late founder. Mention of the factory in a recent study of child labour, however, suggests that this may not have been the whole story. In 1792 an agent to the Holywell cotton mills had to explain to the parish board of St Clement Danes in London (which had supplied the child workers): ‘that of the children bound to that company, seven out of nine had run away. He admitted that they were worked from 7 in the evening to 6 in the morning that they were not relieved during the night’. The common practice of factories sourcing children from distant parishes adds another thread to this story of interconnected dislocations.
September 8, 2025 at 11:37 AM
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In a new entry on our research blog, Glasgow's Alex Deans reflects on how Thomas Pennant's tours of Scotland are haunted by absent, ancient trees - and the possibility of enlightened reforestation

curioustravellers.ac.uk/thomas-penna...
Monochrome illustration of a huge, split yew tree, with two leafy outgrowths on each side of a rent and serrated trunk. Subtitled "Yew tree at Fortingal".
July 17, 2025 at 1:26 PM
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Read our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's blogpost 'Black Country Blues: A Welsh Bard Walking', on bardic radical Iolo Morganwg's (rather testy) encounter with the Industrial Revolution at Ironbridge

writingindustry.leeds.ac.uk/essays/black...
Wash/watercolour image of the bridge at Ironbridge in 1785, the metal structure in hazy colours played across boats on a river
July 14, 2025 at 1:02 PM
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Join some of our Curious Travellers team at the FREE Early Career symposium "Journeys of Curiosity", in Liverpool on 25th September 2025.

Propose your papers by 15th August!
Poster image for "Journeys of Curiosity" Early Career One-Day Symposium, Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX, 25 September 2025: Free Event Shows a Romantic-era illustration of the "New Bridge and Aqueduct, Rhiwabon" The Liverpool Travel Seminar is a collaborative and interdisciplinary research forum launched jointly by Liverpool Hope University, the University of Liverpool, and Liverpool John Moores University in 2007. It provides a constructive environment in which colleagues with interests in travel and travel writing discuss the latest developments in their fields and reflect on future directions. The Seminar enables cross-institutional dialogue and research collaboration at national and international level. This year, we are collaborating with the AHRC-funded ‘Curious Travellers’ project, a partnership between the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies (CAWCS), Glasgow University and the Natural History Museum, London. Curious Travellers explores C18th-C19th travel writing, creating digital editions of previously unpublished tours of Wales and Scotland, and focusing on the journeys of naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798). We invite PhD candidates and early-career scholars working in the fields of travel and travel writing to share their own journeys of curiosity. The event is free to attend and limited funding for bursaries is available. We welcome papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks, cultural contexts and historical periods. Papers can be either 10 or 20 minutes: please send enquiries and abstracts of 300 words and a bio of 150 words to the conference organisers: mary-ann.constantine@cymru.ac.uk and e.edwards@wales.ac.uk by 15 August 2025.
July 14, 2025 at 12:07 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Then, on June 20th, the opening of 'ùir-sgeul | earth story', a new exhibition by our artist collaborator Eilidh MacKenzie, exploring Skye’s shieling culture. The exhibition takes place at Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre, Portree, and is open until August 29th
An abstract artwork of billowing charcoal colours on a white and sandy base, with lichen-like yellow and green highlights. Labelled Scorrybreac' - acrylic, bogwood and charcoal on a canvas board.
June 14, 2025 at 11:03 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Still time to register to see this talk by @edwinrose.bsky.social!

Either online or in person at the National Library of Wales (@librarywales.bsky.social)

www.library.wales/visit/things...
Poster for an event held online and in the National Library of Wales today (Tuesday June 11th): Dr Edwin Rose, "Reading the World: Thomas Pennant and the Practices of Natural History"
June 11, 2025 at 11:27 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
A wonderful, glowing review (by travel writer Julie Brominicks) of our Principal Investigator Mary-Ann Constantine's recent book on Romantic-era Welsh tourism

Order it to your libraries!
Two centuries ago they came in their multitudes, on horse on foot and by boat. Enquiring, measuring, painting, thinking, writing, drawing, and map-making. Crawling into coal mining huts. Falling off waterfalls. Motivated by scenery or science, they carried sketchbooks or magnifying glasses, scrutinized rocks and plants, and Welsh language and customs too. Mary-Ann Constantine has unearthed 162 published tours from this period and a further 470 accounts in manuscript form, 17% of which are by women. These writings reanimate the landscape their authors saw, and by turn I see them more clearly; my peers of two centuries ago.
June 10, 2025 at 9:50 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Lastly Elizabeth Edwards from @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social presents on our ecological/artistic outreach work, exploring ornithology, extinction, and natural observation with primary school children from Pennant's own parish
A woman speaks animatedly by a slide showing a classroom set up for an artistic workshop
June 4, 2025 at 11:11 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Now @edwinrose.bsky.social tells us (with appropriate shock and horror) of the large lost painting of penguins by Peter Paillou from Pennant's Downing Hall, sold at auction and currently unaccounted for.

Pictured (almost visibly...) in the slide - if you've ever seen it, get in touch!
A man in a jacket with widespread arms and a wide eyed expression speaks beneath a blurred black and white slide showing a painted penguin
June 4, 2025 at 11:01 AM
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Panel 2 begins! Here is @stephholtnh.bsky.social, explaining the differences and similarities between the real letters between Thomas Pennant and Gilbert White, and the edited and polished versions that make up so much of White's classic 'Natural History of Selborne'
A woman with long hair in a white shirt speaks at a wooden lectern
June 4, 2025 at 10:58 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Finally @lisacardy.bsky.social from @nhm.org details how our crowdsourcing project 'Picturing Pennant' is helping to unlock the spectacular extra-illustrated volumes of Pennant's tours held at the National Library of Wales (@librarywales.bsky.social)
A woman in a blue striped jersey lectures in front of a slide showing an image from the national library of Wales's digital viewer of Thomas Pennant's illustrated tours
June 4, 2025 at 9:04 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Alex Deans explains how Gilbert White managed to significantly influence Thomas Pennant's contributions to the natural history of Scotland despite remaining in Selborne
A bearded man stands behind a laptop balanced on a platform made from a wooden barrell, in front of a slide showing a monochromatic natural history illustration of a rabbit
June 4, 2025 at 8:54 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Nigel Leask questions the idea that Gilbert White saw his highly local naturalism as inherently superior to Thomas Pennant's wide-ranging natural histories and travels
A man in a pale short stands at a lectern beside an old wooden barrell
June 4, 2025 at 8:44 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
Mary-Ann Constantine kicks off the first of our two Curious Travellers panels today at Gilbert White's House in Selborne (@gilbertwhites.bsky.social)
A woman stands at a wooden lectern in a converted barn, in front of a PowerPoint slide showing a crab and other natural history specimens
June 4, 2025 at 8:32 AM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
"fossil fish, a collection of graptolites, trilobites, a bear jaw..."

In our new research blog, @stephholtnh.bsky.social gives us a rare hands-on look at Thomas Pennant's specimens in the British Museum

curioustravellers.ac.uk/enlightening...
A row of three connected wooden cabinets, with glass panels, the lids open in a wood floored library
May 30, 2025 at 10:38 AM
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For our April research blog, Mary-Ann Constantine takes us on a tour beneath north-east Wales

'The ‘Subterraneous Lottery’; Or; Flintshire Exposed.'

curioustravellers.ac.uk/the-subterra...
A cross-section of geological strata, illustrated in brightly coloured strips and arranged/labelled by altitude, with place names like 'Snowdon' and 'Wrexham' attached.
April 30, 2025 at 4:15 PM
curioustravellers.bsky.social
A great day launching our exhibition on Pennant, Gilbert White, and #C18th Natural History @gilbertwhites.bsky.social!

Open to visitors until the summer, and hosting plenty of linked events and a conference in the meantime
A hand holds the "curious minds" exhibition catalogue in the bright sunshine, in front of the part-timber windows of Gilbert White's house and its garden lawns A stuffed nightjar/goatsucker bird in a clear display case, next to an eighteenth-century illustration of the same bird
April 9, 2025 at 9:50 AM