Raising the profile in Thurrock of Alfred Russel Wallace

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The Dell, where Wallace lived

Alan Leyin

The Thurrock Local History Society is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £10,000 to be used to research the life of one of Thurrock’s most prestigious residents – Alfred Russel Wallace – and to raise his profile in Thurrock.

The Lottery funding will allow project volunteers to research:

• the life of Alfred Russel Wallace;
• his role in the discovery of Natural Selection as the mechanism driving evolution;
• his other achievements (the Wallace Line, for example);
• the building of The Dell and its surrounding landscape;
• life in Thurrock around the period that Wallace lived there.

The volunteers will conduct their research by visiting the Thurrock Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Essex Record Office and other places.

They will write up their results and the lottery grant will allow these results to be used as display boards and a booklet under the title Discovering Alfred Russel Wallace. The display boards will be exhibited at the Thurrock Museum at local events such as the Orsett show and at other places in Thurrock to be arranged. The results will also be published on the world wide web.

The project will last a year from 1st April, 2015, but the results of the project will be available for many years to come.

It will be good to involve as many local people as possible. If you would like to be part of this project please contact the Thurrock Local History Society. You can e-mail: JohnMatthews@thurrock-history.org.uk.