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- Rev William Greenwell
- Also known as
-
Rev William Greenwell
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primary name: Greenwell, William
- Details
- individual; archaeologist; collector; cleric/religious official; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1820-1918
- Biography
- British archaeologist, antiquarian and collector. Born at Greenwell Ford in County Durham, rose to be a minor canon and Librarian of Durham Cathedral. Excavated over 300 barrows mostly in the north of England, objects from which were sold to the British Museum in 1879. Also amassed a collection of other antiquities, largely prehistoric, which were sold variously to other collectors (and the BM) but most notably to John Pierpont Morgan (q.v.), who donated them to the BM in 1908 (registered in the BM as WG numbers in 1909). Also donated Oceanic objects through Christy Collection 1870s and 1880s.
- Bibliography
- Graves C. P. 2005, ’Canon William Greenwell and his contemporaries : the history of British archaeology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, , Durham University, 16-17 April, 2005 [Conference report]’, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 15 (2). 45-49.
Murray T. 2005. 'The historiography of archaeology and Canon Greenwell'. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 15(2), 26-37
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bha.15203
Varndell, Gillian, 2016. Gifts from the Past. New information about Neolithic chalk objects excavated by William Greenwell. British Museum Magazine, Autumn 2016, p. 14.