November 13 , 2016:

by Harriet Sherwood

At low tide on an autumn afternoon, the dark shale of Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset is dotted with figures. A group of student marine biologists equipped with instruments are making notes, children clutching nets are rockpooling, and day trippers are picking their way over the natural stone ledges jutting into the water.

Among them is a man who has spent a lifetime discovering and preserving the wonders and secrets of Kimmeridge. Steve Etches, a 67-year-old plumber and self-taught paleontologist, nimbly navigates the rocks like a man half his age, showing me ammonites that date back 150 million years or more. They’re not easy to spot. I follow Etches’ finger as he points at ridges and whorls in the dark rock – and when I find one myself, I feel a flash of pride.

Etches is doing what he loves most: fossil-hunting. Every spring tide – just after a full or new moon – he’s down on the beach, head down, searching the rocks. “I usually go on my own. I’ve always been a solitary guy. I enjoy my own company,” he says. “There’s a sense of being connected with deep time.”

Etches intends to be on hand as much as possible to guide visitors around the collection

Around 10% of his finds are on permanent display in illuminated climate-controlled cabinets, with computer-generated images of marine creatures from the Jurassic era projected on to the ceiling. Their blue light gives a sense of being under water, with prehistoric creatures swimming above and their fossilised remains telling the story of a lost era.

Etches’ collection includes fossilised ammonite eggs – a world first – a two-metre-long Pliosaur jaw, an Icthyosaur with a belly full of fish and squid, and a Pterosaur skull. He says he loves all his finds equally, but one item stands out: a minute echinoid, or sea urchin. It was the first fossil he found, at the age of five. “I was hooked in that moment of discovery,” he says.

It’s called the Jurassic Coast, but this stretch of shore includes rocks from the Triassic and Cretaceous periods too

Kimmeridge Bay is popular with scuba divers and has some of the best surfing waves in the UK, but this museum will draw new sorts of visitors to the Isle of Purbeck, actually a peninsula stretching south of Poole harbour and taking in Studland Bay, Swanage, with its charming steam railway running through six miles of beautiful countryside, and the ruins of Corfe Castle. Stunning walks along sections of the Jurassic Coast can be punctuated by breaks in cafes, pubs and restaurants that take pride in locally sourced produce.

It’s called the Jurassic Coast, but this 95-mile stretch of shore from Exmouth in Devon to Studland includes rocks from the Triassic and Cretaceous periods as well. According to the Royal Geographical Society, it’s the only place on earth where 185 million years of geological history are sequentially exposed in cliffs, coves, coastal stacks and barrier beaches.

He came up with the idea of a permanent home for the collection when he began contemplating what might happen to it after his death. A trust was created to hold the finds for the nation, and shortly afterwards local landowner the Smedmore Estate donated a site for the museum. With £2.5m from the Lottery Heritage Fund matched by private donations, work started on the building in July 2015. Its doors officially opened last month.

Etches intends to be on hand as much as possible to guide visitors around the collection. “I’m untrained and unqualified, so people aren’t intimidated about asking questions,” he says. His 35 years of “field experience” can’t be learned from books, he adds, dismissing “boring” academics.

Even those who know next to nothing about paleontology will find their curiosity about the prehistoric past stirred

The chance to go fossil hunting in dramatic Kimmeridge Bay then view Etches’ remarkable collection and learn about the ancient creatures is likely to prove irresistible to amateur paleontologists and enthusiasts, young and old. Even those, like me, who know next to nothing about paleontology will find their curiosity about the prehistoric past stirred.

Etches never intended the museum to be eponymous, saying the decision was taken in his absence. “Most people don’t know who I am. If they notice me at all, they probably think I’m the plumber,” he says with a wry smile. His modesty is misplaced, though – as much as he wants the fossils to be the star of the show, he has near-equal billing.

Asked what the collection might be worth, Etches claims to have no idea. “I don’t put a price on it. I don’t think about it. People think there has to be a price for everything. Well there hasn’t. Not to me.”