Lectures

English Shell House & Grotto Decoration With Dr Gerald & Margaret Hull

Lecture:	English Shell House & Grotto Decoration With Dr Gerald & Margaret Hull
Lecturer:	Gerald Hull & Margaret Hull
Start Date:	2nd February 2018
Start Time:	1.00pm
End Time:	3.00pm
Under 18s:	£25.00 What's included?

In the eighteenth century landscaped gardening was both intellectually stimulating as well as pleasurable. Shell decoupage was a highly skilled occupation and provided women with a challenge in developing the shell house as one of the most important escapist features on the Garden Tour. This lecture opens with an emphasis on the Shell as an ancient symbol and its inspiration through a wealth of creativity in all art forms. The main focus of will be on the eighteenth century and Dr Gerald and Margaret Hull will share their extensive photography collection which they have gathered during their visits to over 60 shells houses and grottoes throughout Great Britain and Ireland. In their witty and informative talk they will share with us their knowledge of some remarkable shell artists and will conclude with a survey of the growing number of contemporary shell artists and restorers.

Ticket price includes three course lunch with coffee (served at 1.00pm) followed by a one hour lecture at 2.00pm

Please note lunch will be served on shared tables and seats in the lecture room are non-reservable.

Lecturer Information

Gerald Hull Ph.D, MA., BA(Hons) PGCE

Poet Gerald Hull, a Londoner, holds a Ph.D from the University of Wales and spent over thirty years in Ireland where he was Head of English at Fivemiletown College in Tyrone. He gained bursaries from Poetry Ireland and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, held a range of journal editorships, and was involved in the development of Summer Schools on Oliver Goldsmith and William Carleton.

The publications Introductions, Falling into Monaghan and Historiographilia marked his later work here. Falling into Cornwall, a major collection (launched in the Arts Clubs in Penzance and St Ives) marked his family's transition to Cornwall. This has been followed by Graphohistoricity, Salthouse and Chapel and A Shared Experience, the latter two CDs with artist/ poet Bob Devereux and musician Aidan O'Reilly. His work is currently being edited by Alan M. Kent for a Cornish selection, Wave Hub this Autumn. Gerald has read at many literary festivals in the West, including St Ives, Marazion, Newlyn, Lamorna, Penzance – and in Truro and Falmouth. He has been a member of Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Society.

Gerald's work has featured on radio and in magazines. He has read and lectured at over 90 different locations throughout Ireland and Cornwall in the last 25 years. These include Poetry Festivals, universities, schools and colleges, summer schools, symposia, poetry workshops and radio. Along with his own poetry he has specialised in the Brontes, Victorian and Georgian verse, the Romantics, Emily Dickinson, the Carlyles, C19 Gothic and George Gissing. He has a solid working knowledge of Irish poetry from Yeats to Heaney.

Gerald is affiliated to NADFAS -
The National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies.
He is also a member of West Cornwall Decorative & Fine Arts Society.

Gerald's Publications
Windows Author and Artist Series (1994) n/a
Falling into Monaghan (1999) £5.99
Historiographilia (2002) n/a
Falling into Cornwall (2009) £10.00
Salthouse and Chapel (2010) £5.99
Graphohistoricity (2012) n/a
A Shared Experience (2013) n/a

See also - Poetry Ireland Review, Flaming Arrows, Spark Review, Stet, Argus, Gaelacht Lan, Krino, Honest Ulsterman, Cuirt Literary Journal, The Connacht Tribune, The Steeple, Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, W.P. Monthly, Salmon, A Journey in Poetry 1981-2007, Poetry Cornwall, The Cornishman, Cornwall Poetry Anthology, The Backyards of Heaven, At the Year's Turning (Or Volge L'Anno),, Windows Anthology etc

Block Stanzas (from Wave Hub, 2014)
I'm knocking down a Cornish Hedge: rank surgery on a brain
with sledgehammer, jack; secateurs cutting veins in ivy –
wedges of scab, rab, lichen, furze over cracked fingernails.

I'm moving my wall to new land twenty feet on. No need for
numbered stones (big molars left at base, the rest now gone).
Phil's digger grates, clangs mantis through mist. A happy dentist.

I find pennies stamped in lime, centipedes, a phial, colonies of
snails (no rings, gold bands). Each hour there's rain to wash over
mud on the hands. Each shower a nuisance, curse and denial:
I wrack old bones on new land.

For these last late frosts have rattled my box of eggs, tested
my limitations. Issues of possession- this new triangle of meadow,
correcting the boundary by degrees. The hard work satisfies more
than myself, stakes a shift in growth, assembled order, histories.  

Margaret Hull

 

Margaret (nee O'Malley) Hull BA (Joint Honours), PGCE ex-teacher specialising in
speech / drama / literature.
From an Anglo-Irish family in the west of Ireland.
Married to Dr Gerald Hull (ex-lecturer, educationist, poet); 2 children, Tyrone (chef), Rachel (chartered surveyor).
Now living in central Bath after teaching in Wales, London, Belfast and South Tyrone.
Parish Councillor in Cornwall for 5 years.
2012 - 2017 toured Great Britain & Ireland photographing and recording over 100 landscape gardens, shell houses, hermitages and grottoes.
Recently travelled (2015 - 2017) to Italy, France, Germany, Cyprus, Jersey for cataloguing surveys.
Currently lecturing to societies / institutes in Somerset, Avon, Wiltshire, Dorset. Has also given illustrated lectures in St Ives, Newlyn, Penzance, Truro, Falmouth and Tavistock.
Member of NADFAS; hopes to become affiliated lecturer this year.
Member of National Trust and BCNT.
Member of BRLSI and lectured in Bath in 2016 and 2017.
Member of Georgian Society.
Member of The Folly Society.
Member of Avon Gardens Trust.
Has publication on Joseph and Josiah Lane, master builders of the 18th century, accepted for special issue publication by Folly Journal.
Currently writing / accumulating detail for future publication on shell artists and restorers - notably Tess Morley, Blott Kerr-Wilson, Diana Reynell, Linda Fenwick, Ingrid Thomas.
Mary Delany, west country shell houses and grottoes, the rare and eccentric architecture of Bath are favourite topics.

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