The Isle of Thorns was a conference centre owned and run by the University of Sussex. It was situated in the Ashdown Forest not far from Gatwick Airport. During the 1970s it was the venue for regular informal meetings on category theory organised by Gavin Wraith and Chris Mulvey.
As a very non-categorical aside, if anyone wants to get an impression of the countryside there, they should look at the pictures of E. H. Shepard in the original editions of Winnie-the-Pooh as those are based on parts of the Ashdown Forest only a short distance away from the Isle of Thorns. A lovely place and a lot of good category theory went on there!
(Ironically, or appropriately, when the university sold the centre in 2002 it was bought by the Cats Protection League!)
Last revised on October 18, 2022 at 12:30:55. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.