100 years of Ted Ellis

The nature and wildlife journals of Norfolk’s most well-known naturalist Ted Ellis turned 100 years old in October 2023. To celebrate his life’s work, Water Mills and Marshes launched a project in partnership with The Broads Authority, The Ted Ellis Trust and Norwich University of the Arts to digitise Ted’s wildlife journals, sharing his fascinating discoveries from around Norfolk during the early 1920’s, details of the locations he explored and the diversity of plants and wildlife he saw.

The Ted Ellis archive at Wheatfen Nature Reserve provides a raw and insightful perspective of his discoveries, alongside Ted’s passion for his research. At the moment, Ted’s archive is not widely accessible to the public. This project, aims to open the archives up and share his work with a wider audience, offering access to his early journals, building enthusiasm for wildlife journaling and encouraging engagement with wildlife and the natural world. The collection of journals is vast, so the digitisation process will take some time, but the first step is launching a new ‘digital museum’ over on Instagram and running events such as the recent journaling workshop led by Prof. Suzie Hanna, Ted’s daughter. Read more about who Ted Ellis was and the process to digitise his journals, as well as upcoming events and workshops over on the Broads Authority’s website here. Find digital versions of the journals on the Broads Authority Flickr page.

100 Years of Ted Ellis on Instagram 

Follow @tedellis_journals, a virtual museum of Ted’s life, showcasing his research, visuals, texts, annotations and illustrations, which aims to share Ted’s work with a wider public audience. Curated by Norwich University of the Arts Photography student Monika Swiat, who joined the Authority for a six week internship, the account will pick out interesting snippets, drawings and observations, as well as visiting some of the places that Ted frequented to see how they have changed in the last 100 years.

The ‘100 years of Ted Ellis’ Project is funded by Water, Mills and Marshes,, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported by the Ted Ellis Trust, Broads Authority and Norwich University of the Arts. Journals, images and other records have kindly been provided by the Ellis family as well as The Museum of the Broads.