Institute of Nocturnal Lepidoptery · Merrowmere Valley · est. 1974
Every clear night since 1974, one lamp is lit at the end of the cutting garden and every moth that answers is counted, described, and released. Fifty-two years. One ledger. 4,118 species and counting.
Move your cursor — you are carrying a small light. Part of the swarm will follow it.
The Noctuary is not a museum. Nothing here is finished. The drawers are opened nightly, relabelled monthly, and argued over constantly. We hold the only continuous single-lamp survey in the northern valleys: the same 160-watt vapour lamp, the same three metres of white sheet, the same patience, since the spring of 1974.
What the lamp gathers, the ledger keeps. What the ledger keeps, the drawers remember. Most of what flies at night has never been named — we name what we can and pin our uncertainty next to it, on a smaller label.
Drawer 41 · opened for viewing
Eight plates from the current rotation. Each specimen was drawn from life at the lamp, measured, and released before dawn — the pin holds the drawing, never the moth.
From the ledger
Night 18,904 · 11 June 2026 · 14.2°C, still
A fuse, of all things. Lit at 22:10 instead of 21:40 and the first arrivals were already waiting in the hawthorn — you could see them lift the moment the filament caught, like a held breath let go. Ninety-one moths by midnight. A single Velutina pallens, very worn, wings like paper held up to a window. Third record this decade.
Night 18,873 · 11 May 2026 · 9.8°C, thin cloud
Visitors always ask how we count moths that will not sit still. The answer is that we don’t count moths; we count arrivals. A moth that circles, leaves, and returns is one moth twice curious. The ledger has a column for that. It is the widest column.
Night 18,801 · 28 February 2026 · 2.1°C, frost
One moth all night: a Cinerella noctivaga, drab as ash, sitting on the sheet like a flake that had refused to melt. Keeper Ashfeld drew it twice — once for the drawer, once because the first drawing did not look cold enough.
Lamplit hours only
The Noctuary opens at civil dusk on any night the sky is clear, and closes when the last moth loses interest — usually near two in the morning. Wear dark clothing. Red torches only past the gate. The lamp does the talking.
Lamplighter
£4 / night
One night at the sheet. Includes a pencil, a blank ledger line with your name on it, and whatever the dark decides to send.
Keeper of the Drawer
£60 / season
All clear nights, March to November. Your own drawer plate, your own pin number, and first look at anything unnamed.
Fellow of the Noctuary
£200 / year
Everything above, plus the winter reading of the ledger by the stove, where the year’s uncertainties are argued into names.