Ulster Museum

A bit like the, the, uh, the exhibit of Henry Joy McCracken's-

In the Ulster Museum

...

in, in the Ulster Museum.

Yeah.

So these were all specially kind of thought.

When they lifted the capstones they found this beautiful circular subterranean structure and you can see it's divided into compartments and in each compartment there were bits of pottery, remains of pots, burnt bone and then in compartment D there were five skulls so she was one of those skulls.

She would have been stored in the Ulster Museum and in Queens over the intervening time period.

So at the time, you know, the anatomists who looked at her, you know, they were able to recognize that she was a skull of a female.

My sort of osteological work, you know, more recent times has confirmed that.

Okay, let's get into the topic, plant collecting.

A few years ago, I visited the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The museum is excellent if you ever get the chance to go.

I highly recommend.

As a history enthusiast and some historian, uh, and sometime historian, it's a challenge... uh, channel I am very fond of.

I recommend it to friends, family, people studying history at school level, including my, at my time working at the Ulster Museum, where I would sometimes recommend a particular episode on Egypt and the Viking expansion to our punters."

Aw.

"And yes, I am based in Northern Ireland, and we use that word here." Uh, for those who don't remember, on that episode, I used the word punters.

Do you know the fir- I, like I said, this in a pod before, but, like, we were in P2 or whatever.

We, first time we went to the Ulster Museum, and they were like, "We're gonna see a wee mummy." And I was like, "Oh, sh-" And she was lying there dead, and that made me think of my wee mummy.

And I was like, "Oh, I wouldn't like people looking at my wee mummy if she was like this."

She was like that?

Or the Johnson's tea.

The Malone Road began on an incline – a small hill that, if you're familiar with Belfast today, is the incline just outside Botanic Gardens, on which sits the Ulster Museum, Maggie Mays and Methodist College.

The rest of Belfast was built – or most of Belfast, sorry – was built on an area of slob or flat land.

In fact, part of East Belfast, Ballyhackamore, comes from the Irish for town on the flatland or town on the slobland.

Oh, wow.

whenever it was apartments, from 36 to 39, while he was the director of the Ulster Museum, the art curator of there.

And then, of course, whenever it was the Troubles, then it all turned into offices, and there were so many offices there.

And then I suppose, you know, they were in a bit of a bad state of repairs by the time I sort of came back from France.