Yorkshire’s Jurassic World: how the Ichthyosaur came to York

Yorkshire’s Jurassic World: how the Ichthyosaur came to York

One of the star exhibits in the Yorkshire Museum’s major new exhibition, Yorkshire’s Jurassic World, is the magnificent skeleton of an ichthyosaur (which can also be viewed, by the wonders of Augmented Reality, clothed again in skin and flesh). When the ichthyosaur was found at Kettleness near Whitby in 1857, the Museum, then run by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, was keen to secure it. However there was an asking price of 100 guineas (£110). The YPS was considering putting out an urgent appeal to its members for donations when one man, the Rev Danson Richardson Roundell, to avoid any delay, presented the society with the entire sum.

Born in 1784, the reverend gentleman was elected to YPS in 1827 under the surname Currer, which he had assumed in 1806. He held no clerical office but was an influential York magistrate, living at Clifton House, now the White House, 10 Clifton. On the death of his elder brother Richard, also a YPS member, in 1851 at the family seat, Gledstone Hall, West Marton, near Skipton, he reverted to the name Roundell and moved to Gledstone, living there until his own death in 1873. Although he did not keep up his membership, his generous gift clearly showed his continuing attachment to York and to the Philosophical Society. Today, it might be the equivalent of about £12,000.