The Isles of Scilly Museum was opened in 1967 by the Isles of Scilly Museum Association with the aim of providing a permanent home for the finds from the archaeological site on Nornour. The present purpose-built building was built by the Council of the Isles of Scilly, financed by subscriptions, donations from the Duchy of Cornwall, various trusts and generous well-wishers, including a handsome interest-free loan from the late Mr K. M. Leach, a benefactor with a great interest in Scilly and especially the wildlife. Many natural history collections are held in the museum, including the Tresco Abbey bird collection, seashells, lichens and many other specimens. The museum also houses a small library of books on Scilly and many photographs, maps and artefacts. As honorary curator, Steve Ottery ran the museum for many years, assisted by a team of devoted and knowledgeable volunteers. Recently, Amanda Martin was appointed as part-time curator, although she too relies on a rota of volunteers to help deal with around 12,000 visitors annually and enquiries from all over the world. Another well-known resident of Hugh Town is the potter Humphrey Wakefield. Humphrey has contributed to many aspects of the work of the museum, both archaeological and natural history, as well as being the first chairman of the Environmental Trust.
A former senior curator of another museum, the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, the late Roger D. Penhallurick wrote a number of books and papers on the natural history of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, including Birds of the Cornish Coast (1969), The Birds of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1978) and The Butterflies of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1996).
The MacKenzie family on St Mary’s had been very much involved in the setting up of the local museum. Peter Z. MacKenzie was the veterinary surgeon on the islands and also an enthusiastic naturalist and amateur archaeologist who contributed much to what was known at the time, especially on birds and plants. In 1971 he was appointed part-time honorary NCC warden. Until David Hunt arrived, Peter and his great friend Ron Symons, plus Hilda Quick and the young Francis Hicks on St Agnes, were the only resident birdwatchers on the islands. As honorary warden, Peter was responsible, among other things, for setting up the first nature trail at Lower Moors. Also at this time the NCC were bought a boat, the Marius Neilson, by Mr Leach (who had helped with the loan to set up the museum), and this enabled Peter to warden the uninhabited islands and count seals. Until Peter’s untimely death in 1977 his boatman was a young islander, Cyril Nicholas. In 1979 Cyril was taken on as the NCC’S and later English Nature’s boatman/estate worker, running the Marius Neilson and then her later replacement Melza. Over the years Cyril has taken many survey teams around the islands and has been particularly adept at tricky landings on the smaller uninhabited islands. He has also contributed a great deal to the knowledge of the natural history of Scilly.
Someone who made a huge contribution to the understanding of the early Scilly environment was Frank Turk, who had lived in Cornwall from 1939 with a collection of 14,000 books and a private museum of specimens. Dr Turk was a polymath whose interests ranged from Chinese and Japanese culture to poetry, Siamese cats, art and music, and the natural sciences. He wrote papers on many natural history subjects; he was an expert on mites, myriapods, false scorpions, mammals and animal bones from archaeological sites. His studies of animal bones found on archaeological sites in Scilly have given us a detailed picture of the species of birds and animals that formerly inhabited the islands. His wife Stella Turk worked in tandem with her husband for many years, supporting his work. Stella Turk was born in Scilly, on St Mary’s, but emigrated with her family to New Zealand when she was two, returning to Cornwall when she was seven. Stella is perhaps best known for her work on land and marine molluscs and other invertebrates, as well as her book Sea-shore Life in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (1971). Stella retired from her work at the Cornwall Biological Records Unit in 1993, since when she has continued to give her time voluntarily, entering thousands of records on the ‘Erica’ database of Cornish records. In January 2003 Stella’s contribution to Cornish natural history was recognised when she was awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours.
It was when I first visited Scilly and stayed at the St Agnes Bird Observatory at Lower Town Farm that I met Hilda Quick, the resident birdwatcher and a force to be reckoned with. Miss Quick, as she was always called, moved to her cottage just a few metres from Periglis beach, St Agnes, in 1951. When the bird observatory first started up in 1957 she was at first greatly opposed to the use of mist-nets and would cut birds out of the nets if she found them.
FIG 23. ‘Birdwatching from a boat’. A woodcut by Hilda Quick of herself, from her book Birds of the Scilly Isles (1964).
FIG 24. ‘Seabirds’. Another of Hilda Quick’s woodcuts, produced in her tiny cottage by Periglis beach, St Agnes.
Fortunately she was eventually won over and although she probably merely tolerated ringing, she nevertheless became a stalwart friend and supporter of the bird observatory. She wrote Birds of the Scilly Isles (1964), a small volume illustrated with her own woodcuts (Figs 23 & 24), and also edited the Scilly records for the Cornwall Bird Report for many years. Her hand-printed and very original Christmas cards were a delight to receive. If especially favoured, you might be invited in for a glass of wine made from local wild flowers. In this she was quite an expert and enjoyed demonstrating the difference between wine made from ling flowers and that made from bell heather. Miss Quick kept her elephant-size copy of Audubon’s Birds of America propped open for visitors to admire in her cottage.
The St Agnes Bird Observatory was started by a group of enthusiastic London birdwatchers and ringers. The first year they camped, but in 1958 they moved into Lower Town Farm. The founder and organiser was John Parslow, then working at the British Trust for Ornithology’s Ringing Office, based in the Bird Room at the Natural History Museum. John later went to join David Lack’s team at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford, working on bird migration. The unoccupied farmhouse building was rented from Lewis and Alice Hicks of the Lighthouse Farm, who took a great interest in the doings of the birdwatchers. It was in Lewis Hicks’ boat Undaunted that many of the ringing expeditions to the bird sanctuary island of Annet were made. Perhaps part of their interest was due to their youngest son Francis, who was a small boy at the time and an avid birdwatcher. Before he went away to school on the mainland Francis had an extraordinary bird list, with many great rarities, but no woodpeckers, owls or other common birds! Francis now runs the farm, still finding rare birds; he always wears a pair of binoculars, even when working on his tractor.
Two other enthusiastic birdwatchers at the time were Ruth and Gordon George. Gordon was a farm labourer who worked for Lewis Hicks, and he and his wife Ruth lived in a cottage (now the Turk’s Head pub) by the quay at Porth Conger. They not only kept a lookout for any new birds that had arrived, but encouraged the birdwatchers to stop off at their cottage for a ‘second breakfast’ after the morning circuit of the island. This usually ensured a coffee and a generous wedge of the fruit cake Ruth baked specially for the birdwatchers.
The early days of running an observatory on a small, inhabited island had their problems, such as when the young daughter of the island’s postmaster and her pony rode into a mist-net. Even in its short life, the observatory carried out very valuable work as part of a network of bird observatories around the country. Unlike the big, manned observatories with resident staff, places like St Agnes were run on a shoestring, with a committee who organised the finance and bookings as well as the teams of volunteer ringers and observers. During the life of the observatory it attracted many of the well-known ‘names’ of the ornithological world. Some stayed in the hostel-type accommodation at the observatory and others brought their families and stayed at guesthouses on the island. Many of these have remained loyal to the islands and have returned many times since.
Over the eleven years of its existence the Observatory Committee recorded breeding success, migrants and ringing in an annual report. Although it officially closed in 1967 when the farmhouse became