LETTER: Geologist was a Clitheroe man

The mention in last week’s letters of local geologist the late Stanley Westhead brought to my mind an earlier geologist who was a son of Clitheroe.

He was Donald Parkinson PhD., BSc., Fellow of the Geological Society of London who was born in 1891 and died in 1974. He was the son of James P. and Mary Parkinson of Clitheroe.

A guide book to the Ribble Valley published in the late 1920s contains an authoritative article by him on the geology of the Ribble Valley and it also lists a paper by him published in 1926 on an allied subject which was available at that time in “Clitheroe Free Library”.

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At the age of 20 the 1911 census gives his occupation as “Compositor Printer” which makes his subsequent academic achievement all the more creditable. His name lives on in a species of fossil which is found in the Coplow quarry and was named in honour of him.

MICHAEL CALOW,

Bramhall, Stockport.

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