Lapworth Museum Creative Writing Competition 2026 Winners
As crowned by Alice Roberts, Han Burrows, and Abbie Roberts, here are the five winning stories from the Lapworth Museum's first Creative Writing Competition!
Artwork by Molly Pack.
Our winners are...
The Stars of the Lapworth
Eloise Barton | Ages 5 – 8
Once upon a time there were some very shiny, colourful stars. They were made up of all sorts of minerals.
One day, a rocket came and hit the sleeping stars, right out of the sky.
They plummeted to Earth as fast as a beam of light.
The stars settled all over the Earth, when they woke up it was dark, some of the stars had tripped and fell inside the ground.
After 5 million years (or so), one of the stars in the sky came back to check on his friends and my, how they had changed! Time, pressure and lava had transformed the stars into something new and magnificent. One of the stars said “we are all so so different, some of us have become diamonds and some of us have become crystals!”
One star said “I am Milky, don’t you remember me?” The shiny star had turned into a beautiful calcite and quartz geode; silver and white.
“I’m golden and I look like sparkling sand” said the new chalcopyrite.
“I may be small, but I look like fiery jelly-jam and blood” said the quartz fire opal.
“I’m as bright as sweetcorn and banana, but I don’t taste as good..!” said the yellow sulphur and another said “I look like cake icing but don’t eat me either!”
“I’m like purple spiky grapes growing on a piece of wood, they call me amethyst” said another.
In 2026, the stars were in there new forms, and were all now living at the Lapworth Museum. The remaining star was excited now he could see all of his best friends in one place. They were like a unique rainbow of friendship; the same and different; polished and clean now they were out of the ground.
Some were silky, some were metallic, some were translucent and some were opaque - but they were all beautiful.
They were ready to be admired by everyone who came to gaze upon them - the stars of the Lapworth.
“Sedimentary, my dear Watson”
Edward Booth | Ages 9 – 11
Night fell at the Lapworth Museum of Geology. The curator went round each of the rooms, turning out the lights and wishing the exhibits a good night’s sleep. Eventually, all the lights were out. The curator shut the final door and bolted it. Silence lay across the museum like a thick layer of lava.
Suddenly, there was a noise. A noise like the tap-tap-tapping of a geologist’s hammer
delicately exposing a rare fossil. Was someone working late in the museum? No: the rooms lay still and everyone had left for the day. Or, to be precise, every human had left for the day. For a keen observer might have realised that the tap-tapping sound came from the floor beneath Roary the skeleton. Was someone trying to break in through the floor, then? Wrong again. The keenest observer would have seen, scuttling across the floor, two mice. One was long and thin, with a distinct look of wisdom about his features. The other, who followed the first, was shorter and (if we’re being kind) bigger boned.
“So, what’s the plan, Holmes?” asked this second mouse, whose name was Dr Watson.
“Tonight, Watson, we are searching for the greatest of prizes amongst this veritable Aladdin’s cave of wonderful things,” replied Holmes, scurrying up the back of an ichthyosaur.
“Oh yes? And what’s that, then?”
“Cheese, dear Watson! Cheese, the most splendiferous of all things to be found in the
Lapworth. Humans come here for the amethysts and aquamarines; but for us mice, cheese is the main attraction! We just need to find some.”
The two mice made their way upstairs, to a gallery filled with specimens of minerals. Watson gasped in disbelief.
“My goodness, Holmes! I’ve never seen such beauty! But where is the cheese?!”
“It will be here somewhere, Watson. We simply need to be methodical in our search for it.” Before Watson could respond, Holmes skittered away, his nose in the air and his whiskers trembling like an Allosaurus’ lunch.
Watson turned to begin his own search for the cheese. He peered through glass cabinets at dazzling rocks of every colour of the rainbow: pinks, purples, oranges. They were the most incredible things he had ever seen. At every turn was a wonder of the natural world – not only the rocks but fabulous fossils, tremendous trilobites, and... “ARGH!” Watson saw himself jump in the reflection of a cabinet. Inside, the tooth of a giant shark, a Megalodon, gleamed threateningly in the twilight.
Watson gulped and moved to the next display, where a large lump of some milky-coloured substance was presented on a stand.
“Aha!” thought Watson. “The cheese! And I’ve found it before Holmes! Maybe it’s me who’s a great detective, after all!”
At that moment, Holmes emerged from around the corner. He was clutching what appeared to be a hunk of cheese and pickle sandwich, which he gnawed enthusiastically.
“Before you say anything, Holmes, I have found the cheese!” declared Watson, brandishing the milky-coloured substance with a look of pride and greed glinting in his eye.
“Errmm, Watson...” said Holmes; but before he could finish, Watson sank his teeth deep into the chunk.
“Owww!” shouted Watson. “Ewww! That’s not cheese! That’s as different to cheese as you can get!”
“Indeed, Watson, indeed,” said Holmes, taking a further nibble of the curator’s leftover
sandwich. “Actually, you might say it’s like chalk and cheese; because it is, in fact, chalk!”
Watson smiled sheepishly at Holmes. “But how did you know, Holmes?”
Holmes raised one eyebrow and grinned.
“Well... it’s simply sedimentary, my dear Watson.”
The Museum of Hidden Stories
Syeda Zainab Haider | Ages 12 – 14
Rain tapped softly against the windows of the Lapworth Museum as Elsie stepped
inside, rubbing her cold hands together. The familiar smell of old wood, books and
polished display cases made her smile. She had been coming to the museum for as
long as she could remember. Some children spent their weekends at football practice
or shopping centres. Elsie preferred fossils, volcanoes and anything that had been
hidden underground for millions of years.
Her grandfather had always encouraged her curiosity. Whenever they visited together,
he would tell her that museums were like time machines.
"You don't need buttons or flashing lights," he would say. "Just a good imagination!"
This time, though, Grandad wasn't with her. He had caught a nasty cold and insisted
she visit without him.
"Try not to spend the whole afternoon staring at dinosaurs!" he joked before she left.
"No promises!" Elsie had replied.
She wandered through the museum to where she wanted. She stopped beside a giant
marine reptile fossil and imagined it swimming through warm prehistoric seas. Then
she moved on to the mineral collection, one of her favourite parts of the museum. She
loved the idea that something as ordinary as a rock could spend millions of years
growing quietly beneath the Earth's surface before ending up in a museum display case.
A small crystal sat in her coat pocket. She had received it during one of the Lapworth
Museum's geology workshops several months earlier and carried it around for good
luck whenever she visited.
As she sat on a bench, sketching an amethyst crystal in her notebook, the museum
clock struck three.
The crystal in her pocket suddenly felt warm.
At first, Elsie thought she must be imagining it. Museums had a habit of making her
imagination run wild. Still, when she slipped her hand into her pocket, she could feel
the crystal humming gently against her fingers.
"About time," a voice said.
Elsie looked up so quickly she nearly dropped her notebook.
There was nobody nearby.
"Down here," the voice said. "Honestly, humans never look in the obvious places!"
The voice was coming from her pocket.
If anyone had told Elsie that one day a talking crystal would introduce itself to her, she
would probably have laughed. Yet somehow, sitting in one of her favourite places in the
world, it didn't seem impossible at all.
"My name is Shard," the crystal said. "I've been waiting for someone curious enough to
listen."
"You're a crystal," Elsie whispered.
"Very observant."
Shard explained that it had once formed deep beneath a volcano millions of years ago.
According to the little crystal, some of the objects in the museum held memories of the
Earth's past. Usually, those memories stayed hidden. Every now and then, however,
they chose someone to share them with.
"Why me?" Elsie asked.
Shard paused for a moment.
"Because you've been asking questions since you walked through those doors when
you were six."
That seemed like a surprisingly good answer.
Shard told her that the Lapworth Museum was more than a building full of interesting
objects. It was a place where pieces of Earth's history had been brought together, each
with its own story.
"Most people look at fossils and think they're old bones," Shard said. "They're forgetting
that those bones belonged to creatures that lived in worlds completely different from
ours."
As Shard spoke, something strange began to happen. The museum didn't magically
transform or burst into colour. Instead, it felt quieter somehow, as if time had slowed
down.
The marine reptile fossil seemed almost alive as Elsie imagined it swimming through
ancient oceans. The glittering minerals reminded her that they had formed under enormous heat and pressure long before humans existed. Even the volcanic rocks looked different now that she thought about where they had come from.
Then Shard told her about the Sleeping Mountain.
Deep within the museum's collection of volcanic rocks, an ancient mountain spirit slept
peacefully. It wasn't frightening or dangerous. It simply represented the forces that had
shaped the Earth for billions of years.
"Once every hundred years," Shard explained, "the Sleeping Mountain asks a question."
"What question?"
"Are humans still curious?"
Elsie laughed softly. "That's an easy one."
"Is it?" Shard asked. "People are busy these days. Sometimes they walk past wonderful
things without ever stopping to ask how they got there."
Elsie thought about all the children who had visited the museum and pressed their
noses against the glass displays. She remembered watching people stare up at the
dinosaur skeletons with huge smiles on their faces.
"I think people are still curious," she said. "Otherwise, museums wouldn't exist."
Shard seemed pleased with that answer.
Together, they stopped beside a piece of black volcanic glass resting in one of the
display cases.
"Place your hand on the glass," Shard said.
When she did, she imagined hundreds of future visitors walking through the museum's
doors. Some would become scientists. Others might become artists, teachers or
writers. Some would simply leave knowing a little more about the world than they did
before.
The Sleeping Mountain didn't need grand speeches or magical ceremonies. It only
needed proof that people still wanted to learn.
The museum clock chimed four times.
The warmth in Shard's crystal slowly faded, and the museum became ordinary once
again.
Or perhaps it had always been extraordinary.
Later that evening, Grandad asked her what she had enjoyed most about her visit.
Elsie smiled before answering.
"The stories," she whispered.
Before going to bed, she wrote one sentence in her sketchbook:
"The Lapworth Museum isn't full of old things. It's full of things that still have stories left
to tell."
Whitby Legacy
Elizabeth Wilby | Ages 15 – 19
I woke up to the wind whipping branches against my window, and reached the cliffs before the sun’s rays began to show over the cliff-broken horizon. The thin soles of my old shoes did little to protect my feet from the pressure of stones beneath, though years of this had hardened the skin, sores and blisters forming rough callouses over time. My coughs, hacking and raw, were stolen by the wind.
Being unmarried – rather unusual in 1857 – and therefore not confined by the constraints of home life, time was not an issue. I could, and did, spend hours along the coasts and cliff-edges, sorting through the rubble of sandstone and mudstone for fossils. I spent my mornings beneath the cliffs and my afternoons on the streets of Whitby, selling whatever I'd been able to find that day. Little crinoid stems and deep jet lined my stall, priced reasonably for my effort at a few shillings apiece, but my earnings were only enough to cover a day, or possibly two, of living.
It was on one of these same days, when a stern-looking gentleman in a woollen tailcoat approached my stall. He had a certain air about him that told me he wasn't here to browse.
"Miss Diffey, is it?" The man fixed me with a sharp gaze. "My name is Martin Simpson. I am the Lecturer and Keeper for the Whitby Museum. Your enthusiasm for our coast's history has intrigued me for a long while, and I extend an invitation on behalf of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. We would like your collections to become a part of our exhibitions. Naturally, payment would be arranged."
For a few seconds, I stood in dumbfounded silence, taking in the proposal.
"Miss Diffey?" He pressed, "If you're still uncertain, let me tell you something. The fossils you have been finding belong to our town, not to whichever tourist is rich enough to spend money on something they'll hardly appreciate."
His words stung like gravel in the wind, but I knew he was right. The rich aristocracy would not truly understand.
"Mr Simpson, your offer is flattering. I would be honoured to sell worthwhile finds to the collection."
The wiry man broke into a wide grin and extended his hand to shake mine.
"It is settled, Miss Diffey. We look forward to your contributions."
Meetings with Mr Simpson and the Society became quite frequent, for they could identify the type and worth of my findings with much more skill than I could. Mornings remained early, and evenings ended late, but even in the quietest parts of my day, I enjoyed every part of what I did.
But as the months went by, that hacking cough in my throat worsened. I tried to put it down to the salty, cold air blowing in from the North Sea, but as blood began to stain my handkerchiefs, the worry grew into a knot low in my stomach.
On one particularly cool morning, my feet had purchase on a small ledge of rock not far from the sand, and I had decided to look at a section of the cliff I had not tackled before. The layers of alum rock were perfect and soon showed sign of something special. I toiled without end for
days, the mysterious discovery beginning to take shape. A large fossil emerged from the rock.
I marched to the museum to speak with Mr Simpson about my discovery, unable to identify it myself. He came quickly, whalebone umbrella tapping against the cobbled streets before we cut down to the beach.
"Miss Diffey, I do believe you have found something extraordinary." He turned to me after a long pause. "This looks to be the skull of an ichthyosaur, more commonly known as a sea dragon. I dare say there may be a full skeleton in there, considering the location."
I supervised the museum team’s excavation work every day, though I always found myself short of breath. It took weeks to fully extract the skeleton. Once fully revealed, it was stunning in its intricacy.
Mr Simpson approached me after the celebrations, "Pardon me, Miss Diffey, but I have become extraordinarily concerned about your health. I truly don't mean to frighten you, but these symptoms are common in beachcombers. It's called Phthisis, or 'Jet-Lung'. Does that sound familiar?"
Jet-Lung. An infamous term in the town. It stole people's lives in a flash; of course it was a familiar term. I suppose I expected to hear that kind of news. I just didn't want to believe it.
I returned to the museum a few weeks later, to meet with Mr Simpson.
"As a member of the Society, I would of course encourage you to sell this magnificent specimen to our museum, though I'm afraid we would only be able to scrape fifteen pounds for you." He sighed, "But... Martha. As a friend, I ought to advise that you would gain more by selling it to a private collector. About two hundred pounds, I would estimate."
Two hundred pounds? It would surely see me through at least two, or perhaps four, years of my living costs. But would I even live to use that money? Though the sum was enticing, I knew my heart truly lay with the museum, and with my homeplace of Whitby.
My voice was hoarse. "Take it, Mr Simpson. I have use for a legacy, but I have no use for a fortune."
The skeleton was displayed in the museum within a few months, mounted proudly on the wall. Finally, my gaze rested on the plaque beneath for the last time.
Ichthyosaurus crassimanus
Found in 1857 by Martha Diffey (b.1827)
I was no longer sad. Just proud. My legacy would live on forever, in my beloved Whitby Museum.
Her Father's Desk
Eliza Clark | Ages 20+
Large boxes: 2 pairs labelled CHARITY, KEEP, MUSEUM.
Sara has been at it for an hour. Behind the door hangs what can easily be sorted.
Overcoat: 1, Windbreaker: 1, Hat: 1. She lifts them from the hook and places them in the CHARITY box.
She has been organising the contents of her father’s study for a week. She scans the
almost empty space for the fifth time, pausing deliberately at certain items to make a
permanent memory of them.
Sara walks over to his desk and lowers herself onto his leather Winchester chair. She
has left this until last. On the desk: a wooden frame with a photo of her father and mother and her 15-year-old self. Her gaze shifts to the book resting next to it, Lyell’s Principles of Geology, spine cracked with numerous fluorescent orange page markers bristling from its side. Her father’s spectacles resting on its covers, lenses dusty. She picks up all three and carries them to the box labelled KEEP.
Back at the desk she stands with her hands on her hips. Academic journals, some read
and unread, stacked: 65. Microscopes under dust covers, slides still in place: 2. Slides in a pine box: 1. Index cards in a mahogany box, his smooth handwriting, a lifetime’s
referencing: 1. A slab of ripple-marked sandstone, a frozen ancient seabed resting on the far left side of the desk: 1. Chunks of ammonite used as paperweights: 2. Field notes with small sketches: 5.
Sara places each item gently into the box labelled MUSEUM.
She walks towards the windowsill and turns on the small solar-powered radio, tuning
it to the station her father often listened to. A man’s voice fills the room, warm and assured. Professor Anthony Hewitt, a well-known palaeontologist whose name she’d heard across the dinner table more than twice and read on journals. He is talking about the famous lie.
“—and of course the famous Velociraptors in the films are about twice the size of the
real animal, and they don’t hunt in packs, as far as we know, but that is Hollywood for you. The bigger irony is the title itself. Most of those creatures are Cretaceous. The T. rex, the Triceratops, the frilled ones that spit venom—”
“They don’t spit venom,” Sara mutters. The familiarity of the correction catches in
her throat. Her father’s voice in her mouth. She stops, hands resting on a stack of papers, head bowed.
“—so really it ought to be Cretaceous Park, but I don’t suppose the director was too
concerned with geological accuracy.”
The host laughs. “Professor Hewitt, I suspect you’d have been a terrifying consultant
on that set.”
***
Sara flicks through the papers and drops them beside the shredder. She lowers herself again into her father’s chair and traces her hand across the mahogany edge of the desk until it reaches the first drawer. Locked. She tries a few small keys from the keychain her father had left in his windbreaker pocket. The third key clicks into place. She smiles at the sound.
The drawer is stiff, she coaxes it half open.
Inside, a small ceramic tray with two silver bands: 1. Her father’s wedding band and
her mother’s—she recognises the small solitaire diamond. She believed he had lost it. And a worn leather journal with pages bulging beyond what its binding could hold: 1. She has never seen it before. Her father was not a diarist, or so she thought.
Sara lifts it out, blows off the thin layer of dust, and opens it. His handwriting is as
familiar as ever: smooth and precise, no rush. The first entry she lands on is dated 1986, the year before her birth.
She reads.
A young man came to the museum today. A. Hewitt. Brought with him a rock. It was
grey, pitted, with a deep impression. He said he hadn’t slept or eaten in days. He was thin and unkempt. I examined the specimen. A geofact—no fossil present. I told him otherwise. Wrote a note for the bulletin. Why? The young man reminded me of myself. Terrible or necessary—I cannot decide.
The radio continues. Hewitt is growing lyrical now about the scientific method, the
importance of mentorship, the one man to whom he owes his entire career, “a curator whose integrity was absolute”.
Sara stares at the radio. Then down at the journal where A. Hewitt is written in her
father’s hand. She walks quickly to the box labelled MUSEUM and searches for the brass specimen box she placed there days ago. She finds it. Opens it. The rusted hinges creak. And there it is. The grey, pitted rock with its deep impression, resting on a small wooden base attached to a brass plate. The plate is blank.
On the radio Hewitt is still speaking. Sara looks at her labelled boxes, then at her
father’s journal open on the desk, then back at the boxes, then back at the radio.
She sets the rock down beside the journal. She stands still. Sara doesn’t know which
box they belong to.