After 62 years of teaching the Quaternary course, we take a look back at North East naturalist, Angus Lunn’s lifelong contribution to teaching and his ongoing association with NHSN.
An Introduction to Angus Lunn
Dr Angus Lunn spent most of his professional career in the Department of Adult Education at Newcastle University. In 2013, he launched the successful Quaternary course that ran yearly until 2024 , first in-person at Newcastle University and later, due to changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, on Zoom. In doing so, Angus has inspired many people to explore this fascinating period in the earth’s history.
Over the past 11 years, Angus’ teaching for NHSN ensured that the course itself, which is based entirely on new research, largely linked to climate change, has run consecutively for an incredible 62 years. First at Newcastle University, where Angus taught until 2003, at Sunderland University and later, for NHSN. What an amazing achievement!
Celebrating Angus’ Mammoth Quaternary Chapter!

This January, NHSN held a special Quaternary tea party for Angus, inviting past pupils, many of whom are NHSN members who have attended the Quaternary course for several decades, to celebrate his successful career and passion for teaching. It was such a pleasure to hear their reflections on past outings with Angus, and to hear from Angus himself how he was inspired to undertake his own research into the subject, largely inspired by a book, Climate and Time, published by James Croll in 1875.
Kindly donating this beautiful book to the NHSN Library, Angus shared how he came to own it, sharing:
“Hawse End is a Victorian house in the Lake District, on the shore of Derwentwater. During the Second World War the house was allowed to be used by an evacuated orphanage, and somehow the books in the library, together with correspondence and documents, and a silken suffragettes’ banner, became decanted into a shed in the grounds. Again, somehow, the shed later became used as a chicken shelter, and the books were buried, but largely preserved, in the anaerobic atmosphere of chicken excrement. When, in 1962, Cumberland County Council acquired the house as an outdoor centre, King’s College, sent me – a relatively new member of staff – and my wife Jean (the department’s librarian) to excavate the entombed library. We realised that it contained treasures, including James Croll’s Climate and Time.”
Fond Memories
During the celebration, past attendees of the Quaternary course shared their fond memories of Angus, and time spent together over the years. These paint a picture of many exciting outings and much shared-learning.

“This picture was taken a few years ago when I had a walk with Angus in one if his favourite landscapes above Alston. Angus’s wife Jean grew up in an ancient farmhouse called Low Nest about a couple of miles south of Alston. Throughout their lives together they spent their summers up at Low Nest and Angus had a vast knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Pennines as well as how the landscape had been shaped by geology and then the ice ages.
Jenny Wigston (30 years a quaternary student of Angus)
Angus’ PHD in the 1950’s was on the importance of the flow or border mires as they are called in our region, particularly Butterburn Flow. Their unique wildlife aspect as well as their carbon sequestration capacity. Way before his time, and this lead on to a lifetime of working for nature and protecting important environments. His fascination with the Quaternary led him to a lifetime of reading current scientific papers on the subject and then giving his students on his Quaternary course a potted synopsis of each topic. It has been a privilege, as a student, to have this cutting-edge science brought to our attention. He has made us all so much more aware of our surroundings landscapes, how they were formed and how great our climate change problems are to solve. It is extremely complex, for everything that happens there are feedback and consequences! ”




“When I joined the Quaternary class back in 1993 it had already been going for nearly 30 years and there were quiet conversations going on about how much longer he would keep going. We needn’t have worried; we were treated to another 31 years! Back then he was teaching in a dingy basement room in the King George VI (KGVI) building, at Newcastle University, where there were only about 12 of us and we all sat round one big lab bench in the middle of the room. I always suspected that it might have been one of the old cadavers dissecting rooms from when KGVI was the medical school. It was there that I met Mavis Gill who quickly became a good friend and fellow whiskey drinker, and Jim Milligan who told me to join the NHSN, which of course I did.
Janet Simkin
Sometime after that Newcastle Uni gave up on lifelong learning and passed the whole programme on to Sunderland Uni, who didn’t do much with it except introduce compulsory assessments which did not go down well. Angus came up with some ingenuous schemes to get round that, I seem to remember writing some rubbish about how the parallel roads of Glen Roy were made by mammoths walking in line! It was a relief when they gave up on us as well and Angus persuaded NHSN to take us on instead. Amongst other things, NHSN was more tolerant of the absolute need to reschedule classes around home games down the road. Thursday evenings feel rather empty without Quaternary after such a long time, but it was great fun, and I learned so much. We have much to be grateful to Angus for.”

As well as running the Quaternary Course for 62 years, Angus has greatly contributed to North East Nature writing through the Nothumbrian Naturalist book series. Northumberland is a definitive guide to the natural history of Northumberland, from its ecological history, geology and climate to its naturalists and conservation issues. Why not visit NHSN’s Library Collection at the Great North Museum: Hancock to discover more about Angus’ writing and North East nature.