BIOGRAPHIES

National Institute of Sonic Geology



Dr Stella Barrows, (BsC, PhD, NISG)

Born in Dorset and educated at the Sherborne School for Girls, Stella Barrows first became interested in notions of subterranean resonance when, as a young woman, she met the pre-eminent Archeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler who was then head of the Institute of Archeology. Sir Mortimer was conducting his (now famous) excavations of the Iron Age Hill Fort of Maiden Castle and nearby tumuli sited on the South Dorset Ridgeway. Upon meeting her, Sir Mortimer invited Stella to assist on the dig. Although this was during the heady time of National ‘Hill Fort Mania’ Stella’s attention drifted, and she started to become enthralled by the older Bronze Age Bincombe Bumps (sited near Weymouth, also on the South Dorset Ridgeway), a series of six burial mounds which local myth suggested emit music at midday if listened to carefully enough. Stella experienced the melodic phenomena herself, but swiftly dismissed notions of supernatural or folkloric explanation for these ‘singing barrows’ and started to theorise about how sound might have become trapped within the bedrock of the British Isles. Her conclusions around the specific geology of place being fundamental to these emissions led her away from her first love of Archeology into an interest in the formation of the earth itself.
Stella subsequently attended University College London and graduated with a first in Geological Science. Her postgraduate thesis waswritten on ‘Sonic Resonance in Neolithic Topography’. During the war, Barrows found employment working on the development of Sound Navigation and Ranging (SONAR), focussing on the impact geological configurations and seismic events have on the density and resonance of underwater sounding. Post-war, her passion for sonic emissions reignited and she decided to dedicate herself fully to the nascent fields of Sonic Geology and Sonic Investigation. Stella quickly established the ground-breaking National Institute of Sonic Geology (NISG) of which she is founding member and President. Since its formation, the NISG has grown to include several enthusiastic field operatives and a permanent team who Stella affectionately refers to as ‘Sonic Investigators’, including Roger Millington, Beatrice Lathenby, Hildegard Brunel, Mavis Collingwood and Percival Denny.

Although most of Dr Barrows’ time is taken up with her passion for NISG she occasionally dabbles in landscape painting and learning the Piano Accordion in her Dorset home.


Percival Denny, BsC, NISG, 

Born and raised in Norfolk, Percival 'Plum' Denny attended the same school as the regions' other distinguished son and early amateur subterranean sonic enthusiast, Lord Horatio Nelson. Somewhat of a dullard, Plum bungled his way through his time as a border until he was granted a scholarship to Oxford thanks to his skills as a wicketkeeper. Deft behind the sticks, Plum soon gained a reputation as one of the finest cricketers on the university circuit. Fame beckoned, and Plum was sent on a MCC Exhibition Tour to the Far East, with the purpose of spreading the popularity of God's Chosen Game (locals still talk of his majestic 136 against a Presidents XI in Kuala Lumpur).
However, it was on this tour that events in Plum's life took a mysterious turn. Taking a day trip into the Himalayan Mountains, Plum disappeared. He returned three years later. Although rumours abound of what happened during his time in exile, very few facts have come to light. What we do know is: 

1) Evidence suggests that Plum was almost certainly completely silent for these three years 
2) During that time he developed an incredible ability to listen to the smallest of sounds from the longest of distances 
3) There is some talk of the influences of a shadowy Far Eastern Organisation dedicated to practicing the ancient art of subterranean listening mythologies
4) Plum never played cricket again.
On his return to England Plum switched courses at Oxford and transferred to study Physics, writing a seminal paper on "Ancient Eastern Philosophy and it's Influence on Transverse Waves". Whilst many considered Plum to have gone off the rails, his work attracted the attention of Dr Stella Barrows and he was asked to join the NISG, a position he still holds. Plum is a passionate campanologist and owner of a Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) driving licence.



Hildegarde Brunel (BsC, MsC, NISG)

Hildegarde grew up in Richmond Upon Thames not far from Marble Hill Park. Her parents were 
eminent Egyptologists and the young Hildegarde would often go with them on their archaeological 
digs. Hildegarde first became interested in audiology science when her Mother was pregnant with her younger brother Bertie and she would use a pinard horn to listen to her unborn brother's heartbeat. 

The Pinard Horn is still Hildegarde's preferred listening device and she recently published a short paper on its use in mathematically mapping sonic porosity on the glacier's in southern Iceland. 
Hildegarde briefly flirted with the notion of becoming an aviator before taking up a place at Cambridge to read mathematical science. Whilst at Cambridge she set up the (now disbanded) SLS (Secret Listening Society) – a group dedicated to the exploration of the aural architecture of the environment. After graduation Hildegarde was recruited to take up a post for His Majesty's 
Government. 
Hildegarde became interested in sonic geology and the work of the NISG after reading of the ground-breaking discoveries of Dr Stella Barrows and shortly after Roger Millington was invited to deliver a lecture at the SLS in the development of ear trumpet technology. After leaving the secret civil service, Hildegarde was delighted to have been invited to work with the NISG. She joined the team for the first time last summer at the Little Bredy Sounding Space. A keen diver and a passionate baker, Hildegarde's speciality is lemon drizzle cake.


Lola Thistlewind  (BsC, BPhil, NISG)

Lola Thistlewind is an eminent scholar of Sonic Geology. Her masters thesis on the epistemological implications of acoustic seabed mapping and her latter popular non-fiction book on the subject “Bedding down where the sirens hit rock-bottom” brought her esoteric field of interest into the public eye; to both wide critical acclaim and exceptionally good peer-review.


Born in Marseille to a cartographer mother and The Great Alberto (the unicycling one-man-band travelling sensation) she spent much of her childhood on mapping expeditions; sailing the mediterranean by starlight and pacing topographical anomalies behind her mother or drumming up audiences in harbour markets before her father’s recitals.  When the time came for her to be more formally educated she was sent away to the Sherborne school for girls. It was here that she first heard tell of the Institute for Sonic Geology and its project when a young Stella Barrows gave a visiting lecture at her alma mater. The pair’s conversation afterwards initiated a decades long letter-correspondence about the metaphysics of the phenomenon of the Bincombe Bumps.


Her interest being sparked Lola decided to combine her love and curiosity for land, sea, sound and thought at Girton College where she read for her simultaneous degrees in Philosophy and Natural Sciences. She delivered her final oral examinations in the form of an evening of lyric poetry on coastline rock formation and natural design accompanied by The Great Alberto on the violoncello. Needless to say, her rather traditional professors were not particularly impressed and she left Cambridge without honours. (Only years later, after the poems and sheet music were printed as the introduction to her prize-winning book, was she retrospectively granted her Bsc and BPhil 1st class degrees) Luckily the Institute was not too concerned with honour and Dr Barrows was pleased to welcome Thistlewind on board to continue in the library, the laboratory and the field the work they had been discussing by pen since Lola’s schooldays. Lola has remained integral to the NSIG ever since.


When she hangs up her ear trumpet, Lola is a scuba enthusiast, using her dives to collect subaquatic sounds which she recreates and arranges into experimental compositions. Otherwise she can be found in the mountain with her pencils and watercolours drawing for her upcoming encyclopaedia on Alpine mycology.



Desmond Willis (BIM, NISG)

Desmond has had a lifelong fascination with metallic alloys: his father was a trombonist and in his youth brass bands were his preoccupation. After attending Middlesbrough college of Technology he served as an apprentice at the then thriving Walsall Bell Foundry, an experience which shaped him. 

Forty years on, as he neared retirement he was delighted to find a post, which combined the care and maintenance of fragile and intensively worked metals with the calibration of audio-sensitive apparatus when he joined the NISG as Interim Technician.


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Roger Millington, NISG
(Extract from Sonic Geology: Pioneers of a radical new science? The Times Educational Supplement)

Roger Millington’s interest in geology began as a boy, when he read Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne, and developed a passion for digging holes, much to the annoyance of the gardener at the Norfolk vicarage in which he grew up.

Millington left school at 14, with a solid devotion to mechanical tinkering and outdoor activities, but no qualifications to speak of. After an extensive hands-on practical training as a mining engineer in the South Wales Valleys, where he developed a love of colliery brass band music, he enlisted in the Corps of Royal Engineers as a Sapper. War soon intervened, and he found himself involved in the dangerous tasks of military tunnelling and the preparation of defensive earthworks. This involved long hours underground amid the mud and horror of war, digging beneath enemy lines and listening carefully to vibrations from below ground that might indicate an imminent attack. 
It was during one such mission that Millington had his first experience of geological sonic phenomena. Deep below ground on a Spring day in France, he found himself listening to the unmistakable sounds of medieval plainsong and the playing of spoons, as they oscillated within a large crystalline boulder around which he and his team were attempting to tunnel. Dismissing the experience as evidence of his slow slide into post-traumatic stress, Roger at first denied the preposterous notion that sound could be held in the Earth’s geology. He gritted his teeth, and plunged further into the jaws of international conflict.

The war was not kind to Millington, and eventually he was invalided out of the Army with shellshock and neuralgia, a shadow of his former self. He was shipped to a convalescent home in a former boys’ preparatory school at Seale Hayne, near Newton Abbot, where his recuperation centred on the restoration of a mountain of abandoned orchestral instruments that he had found in a dusty basement. Recovery was a slow and hesitant process. Peace and quiet, and gentle listening to the sounds of nature and light classical music were the order of the day. 

All this changed when Dr Stella Barrows, president of the newly-established National Institute for Sonic Geology, arrived at Seale Hayne to investigate sonic phenomena that had been stimulated by the excavation of an unexploded bomb from the German Beidecker raids on Exeter. Encountering Dr Barrows as she sought to manage an aural upsurge behind the stables with only a battered Henley Audiophone in the way of equipment, Millington learned that the geological sonic phenomena he had experienced in the tunnels of wartime France were in fact geological reality. His world was turned upside down. What he had thought of as madness - sound emerging from the fabric of the Earth itself - was actually scientific fact. Barrows explained to Millington that the phenomena he had experienced had arisen from a verifiable feature of geology that could be empirically proven, catalogued and recorded, if only an appropriate form of reliable detection technology could be developed.

Invigorated by his epiphany, Roger joined NISG as technical advisor. He quickly turned to his basement of musical horns for inspiration, as he wrestled to find a method of improving the detection of subterranean sonic phenomena. Three days of frenetic tinkering led to the creation of the Ear Trumpet, and the detection and recording of the Seale Hayne phenomena.

Evelyn Summerfield


Evelyn first discovered the NISG when, as a girl, she happened upon the National Institute for Sonic Geology (NISG) field unit whilst visiting

Salisbury Cathedral. 

The team were investigating Sounding Space #012 (Wardrobe Museum Gardens) in the Cathedral Close and Evelyn was soon captivated by the sounds emanating from the ground below. It was at this point that Evelyn became fascinated by the idea of geological sonic phenomena.

 

In her home-county of Wiltshire, a place of ancient civilisation and settlement, Evelyn was able to make her own forays into sonic investigations listening to the fleeting emanations of Old Sarum. Whilst studying at Wentworth College for girls she paid great attention to geological sciences as well as pursuing an interest in maritime sciences. Later she departed Salisbury for University College Plymouth’s School of Navigation. 

As a very recent graduate with a first class BSc Evelyn felt frustrated by the lack of teaching and knowledge around Sonic Geology. She therefore attended a research symposium with Dr Barrows who upon reconnecting promptly offered this promising young scientist a paid summer internship with the NISG.

 

Evelyn is hoping to take up further study later in the year. Her hobbies include healthy pursuits such as swimming, sailing and also listening to jazz records.



Dr Wolfgang Lovejoy (BSc, PhD, co-opted NISG)
University of Wisconsin, Barron County Extension Campus

Dr Lovejoy grew up between Palos, Illinois and Long Lake Wisconsin. Born to a boat-builder father and a landscape painter mother, Wolfgang frequently roamed the wild and geologically fascinating countryside, which skirts the Second City of Chicago and Lake Michigan. 

Dr Lovejoy's primary research areas are the geomorphology surrounding the formation of the Laurentian Great Lakes of North America (for the European reader, these are a series of interconnected lakes located primarily in the upper mid-east region of North America). 

Wolfgang trained at the University of Wisconsin in Freshwater Geology and was latterly was part of the first team to be situated at the Barron County Extension Campus. Dr Lovejoy studied glacial formations of Lake Michigan for his doctoral thesis. He first perceived subterranean sounds in his native environment, when upon walking near a log cabin (in which he now resides) an unexplained forceful sonic discharge emitted from the ground beneath his feet. With the help of NISG scientists, this sound has latterly been identified as the movement of vast ice sheets and voices of indigenous peoples from around 14,000 years ago.
Since this first eruption event, Dr Lovejoy has energetically pursued answers – and as is often the way with scientific discovery – has found more questions. He happened upon the academic papers of Dr Barrows and was excited to discover that the study of the sonic phenomena he had experienced had a name: Sonic Geology.


Dr Lovejoy is proud to be the first official International member of the National Institute for Sonic Geology, and the NISG are indebted to the forward-thinking University of Wisconsin for granting his research sabbatical.

Dr Lovejoy has a specialism in the movements of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the Quaternary (Pleistocene) Glaciation, but he dabbles with piano in the evenings. 

Beatrice Lathenby BsC, NISG

Beatrice is the only child of Dr Harold and Margaret Lathenby, renowned archaeologists. She was brought up in London in a house overlooking Regent's Park. Whilst playing in the garden as a child 

Beatrice heard conversational phenomena coming from the ground. When she told her parents they 

worried for her sanity and sent her to eminent child psychologist Dr Heideberger, but finding nothing wrong with her the incident was soon forgotten, by her parents. 
Beatrice gained a Bachelors degree in Geography from St Hilda's, Oxford University. She was employed as an air raid warden in her time there and was praised for her cool head and practicality. Beatrice was also in the ladies cycling and swimming club.

Whilst on a Geography field trip to North Yorkshire, Beatrice happened across Roger Millington at the Brimham Rocks Sounding Space, and was intrigued to hear about the work of the NISG relating it back to her childhood experience. She questioned her professors about NISG and sonic phenomena but was told that they were not a respectable scientific organisation, some even dismissed them as a bunch of fanatics, but undeterred Beatrice started carrying around a stethoscope borrowed from a friend studying medicine. She found a subterranean hum with what sounded like choral voices on the lawn of Queen's College and immediately sent for the NISG. Roger Millington arrived with his investigative equipment but was refused entry by the college. Roger told her about a new sounding space that they were investigating that summer on the South Coast and the need for strong swimmers to join the snorkelling team. Beatrice immediately volunteered and after graduating a few weeks later she joined the NISG down at Burton Bradstock.

Beatrice 'Flippers' Lathenby has been with NISG for two and half years and visited 8 sounding Spaces with them. She has published three papers: The Common Emission of Melodic Events in Alluvial Valleys, The Suspected methods of Seeding on the Southern Shore and Imprinting of Bass Frequency Sound Associated with the Movement of Glaciers all published in The Journal of Sonic Experimental  Geogolgy. She is Captain of the snorkelling team and has produced a pamphlet entitled Snorkelling tips for Sonic Investigators.