Last updated 27/06/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
The ‘Celtic Cabinet’, acquired from John Britton when the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society and Devizes Museum were founded in 1853, is published for the first time. The cabinet, with its watercolours and plaster models, is described. The megalithic subjects of the watercolours which decorate it are identified; two of the paintings are ascribed to John Sell Cotman; the others are related to topographic artists in John Britton's employment. The models in the cabinet of Stonehenge and Avebury are identified as standard products of Hen Browne, the first guardian of Stonehenge. The meaning and associations of ‘Celtic’ as a name for megalithic antiquities are explored. It is shown that the cabinet was made, probably about 1824, for George Watson Taylor of Erlestoke Park, Devizes; the circumstances of its making are discussed, together with the intellectual context of the piece and its relation to Britton's plan for a Druidical Antiquarian Company.
1 The chambered tombs are identified by county and number after Daniel, G. E., The Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of England and Wales (Cambridge, 1950).Google Scholar
2 Britton, John and Brayley, Edward Wedlake, The Beauties of England and Wales …, II: Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall (London, 1801), 389.Google Scholar
3 Vol. F of the W.A.N.H.S. drawings series, and evidently the ‘Volume of Sketches and Drawings of Cromlechs and Circles, by Prout, Underwood, Nash, and Britton’ which was part of the Britton collection as it came to the Society in 1853.
4 Vol. N, f. 246.
5 The date of its disappearance is unknown. In recent years the space has been filled by a pastiche watercolour by Nicholas Thomas, formerly the Museum's assistant curator, and now (1985) by a colour photograph of the well-known Philip Crocker watercolour of barrow-diggers.
6 Jones, T. E., A Descriptive Account of the Literary Works ofJohn Britton, FSA, &c, &c, &c, (from 1800 to 1844): Being a Second Part of his Autobiography (London, 1849), 142Google Scholar. Republished, with a different pagination, as Appendix to Britton's Autobiography … (London, 1850)Google Scholar.
7 Vol. F, f. 5.
8 Vol. N, f. 58, below, reverse. In the same book are different views of the same cromlech: f. 14 is a pen drawing by ‘F.C.H.’; f. 58, above, is a pencil drawing by W. H. Bartlett from a sketch by W. Cotton.
9 Vol. N, f. 240.
10 Vol. F, f. 2.
11 Vol. F, f. 8. There is also a larger Shepherd watercolour (Vol. H, f. 242), which faithfully follows this sketch.
12 Evans, J., The Beauties of England and Wales …, XVII, pt. 1: North Wales (London, 1812), 282–3.Google Scholar
13 See below, p. 133, for the implications of an 1804 date.
14 Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles ofthe British Isles (London and New Haven, 1976), 299, 345.Google Scholar S. and Piggott, C. M., ‘Stone and earth circles in Dorset’, Antiquity, xiii (1939), 138–58Google Scholar.
15 1 Vol. F, f. 11.
16 Vol. N, f. 76.
17 For instance, the profiles of the big foreground stone are much changed; the stone on the far right of the ring is present in the sketch but hidden by a nearer stone in the watercolour; the two barrows, drawn on the right-hand horizon of the sketch very much larger than their real size, are omitted from the watercolour.
18 See, e.g., illustration II of Chippindale, C., Stonehenge Complete (London, 1983).Google Scholar
19 ColtHoare, R., The Ancient History ofSouth Wiltshire (London, 1812), opp. p. 143Google Scholar. Britton, and Brayley, , op. cit. (note 2), opp. p. 134Google Scholar.
20 No. 24 of the framed drawings in the W.A.N.H.S.
21 No. 25 of the framed drawings.
22 Burl, , op. cit. (note 14), 269–71.Google Scholar
23 Vol. H, f. 244.
24 George Cattermole (1800–68) joined John Britton's office as architectural draughtsman in c. 1814, and first exhibited at the Royal Academy i n 1819; his later reputation was based on his historical paintings of the people who had inhabited the architectural antiquities.
25 Samuel Prout (1783–1852) made an abortive tour of Cornwall for John Britton in 1801. The Cornish drawings were a disappointment, but he continued to work for Britton during 1802–4. From 1819 onwards he established his own style, which has parallels in the work of Cox and Cotman.
26 Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836) was draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries; one drawing of his appears in Britton's Beauties of Cornwall; he emigrated to France in 1802.
27 George Shepherd (c. 1782–1830) was awarded the silver palette of the Society of Arts in 1803–4; he drew for the Beauties series (Mallalieu, H. L., The Dictionary ofBritish Watercolour Artists up to 1920 (Woodbridge, 1976), 56, 211, 236, 263).Google Scholar
28 Kitson, S. D., The Life ofJohn Sell Cotman (London, 1937), 65, 98, 173, 249Google Scholar. Hemingway, A., ‘Cotman and his publication projects’, in Rajnai, M. (ed.), John Sell Cotman 1782–1842 (London, 1982), 23–5Google Scholar.
29 See, for instance, the early nineteenth-century paintings in Chippindale, , op. cit. (note 18)Google Scholar.
30 Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 144.Google Scholar
31 The contemporary engraving (fig. 2) shows ‘as it is’ on view, but the text (Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 144)Google Scholar states plainly that the shade is to display both models.
32 Stukeley, William, Abury (London, 1743)Google Scholar was the standard account, equally authoritative n i its sound and lunatic portions, for over a century.
34 Browne, Henry, An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury … (Amesbury, 1823).Google Scholar
35 Browne, H., The Geology of Scripture, Illustrating the Operation of the Deluge, and the Effects of which it was Productive … (Frome, 1832).Google Scholar
36 Gentleman's Mag. (March 1807), 219–20.Google Scholar
37 Some Account of Henry Browne, Seventeen Years a Resident at Amesbury, Wilts … (Marlborough, 1882), 3.Google Scholar
38 K. Annable, personal communication.
39 Chippindale, , op. cit. (note 18), ill. 56.Google Scholar
40 Some Account … (see note 37), 4–5.
41 Britton, J., The Beauties of Wiltshire …, III (London, 1828), 304–5, II.Google Scholar
42 Gentleman's Mag., xcvi (December 1825), 510.Google Scholar
43 Britton, J., Topographical Essay of the Author's Residence (London, 1843).Google Scholar
44 Britton, J. and Brayley, E. W., The Beauties of Wiltshire …, 1 and 11 (London, 1801).Google Scholar
45 Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 142.Google Scholar
46 Britton, J., The Auto Biography ofJohn Britton, F.S.A. (London, 1849), 5, 7.Google Scholar
47 Reproduced on the title page of the 1850 edition of the Autobiography, part 2 (see note 6).
48 Chippindale, , op. cit. (note 18), caption to ill. 116Google Scholar, is wrong to suggest that the cupboards were for collections of antiquarian objects.
49 See the list in Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 144–6.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., 146.
51 Piggott, S., ‘Celts, Saxons and the early antiquaries’, in his Ruins in a Landscape (Edinburgh, 1976), 55–76Google Scholar, examines the broader question of recognition of the Celts by antiquaries.
52 Britton, and Brayley, , op. cit. (note 44), 11, 129.Google Scholar
53 Ibid., 131.
54 Even after the three-age system was established in British archaeology during the 1860s, resistance to the idea that Bronze Age barbarians could manage such perfect work continued, with John Thurnam, Sir Daniel Wilson, James Fergusson and Hodder Westropp all arguing for a later date for Stonehenge on the same grounds as Britton. Chippindale, , op. cit. (note 18), 128–9.Google Scholar
55 The key advance had been Aubrey's view that the native Britons built the stone circles, rather than Romans, Saxons or Danes: Hunter, M., John Aubrey and the Realm of Learning (London, 1975), 159, 180.Google Scholar
56 Edward Lhwyd, letter to John Aubrey, 16th November 1693, in Gunther, R. T., Early Science in Oxford, xiv: Life of and Letters of Edward Lhivyd (Oxford, 1945), 207Google Scholar.
57 For example, Gibson, Edmund, Camden's Britannia, Newly Translated into English with Large Additions and Improvements (London, 1695), cols, XXI–XXIVGoogle Scholar; Lhwyd, Edward, Archaeologia Britannica …, I: Glossography (Oxford, 1707), preface.Google Scholar
58 Pezron, Paul-Yves, L'Antiquité de la nation et de la langue des Celtes (Paris, 1703)Google Scholar; subtitle as translated by Jones, David in the English edition, The Antiquities of Nations (London, 1706)Google Scholar.
59 Borlase, William, Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of the County of Cornwall, 2nd edn. (London, 1769), 72.Google Scholar
60 Cunnington, R. H., From Antiquary to Archaeologist (Aylesbury, 1975), 76Google Scholar; and the correspondence in Devizes Museum.
61 Borlase, , op cit. (note 59)Google Scholar, was unable to find distinct classes of monument peculiar to each of the two pre-Roman eras. Cunningto n was unable o t convince Colt Hoare of the validity of his scheme-the educated antiquary's cautious book-learning took precedence over the (correct) inference to be made from Cunnington's field observation. That episode, and th e backward account of Stonehenge in Ancient Wiltshire that resulted from the old fixed ideas, exemplifies the conceptual difficultie s which so held back nineteenth-century archaeology: see Chippindale, C., ‘Clarence Bicknell: archaeology and science in the 19th century’, Antiquity, lviii (1984), 185–93, especially p. 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 e.g. Gentleman's Mag. lxxxix (May 1819), 447Google Scholar; ‘V.W.’, ibid, ciii (January 1833), 4–5.
63 Hodgson, Adam, Letters from North America, Written during a Tour in the United States & Canada (London, 1824), 11, appendix, section I: ‘Remarks on the vestiges of ancient civilization, which are found in North America, and on the traces of an Asiatic origin, exhibited by the present race of Indians’, pp. 416–42.Google Scholar
64 Fosbroke, Thomas Dudley, Encyclopedia of Antiquities, and Elements of Archaeology, 2nd edn. (London, 1840), 768Google Scholar; also 1st edn. (London, 1825), 920–3.
65 In Herbert's, AlgernonCyclops ChristianusGoogle Scholar, according to the O.E.D.
66 Lubbock, J., Prehistoric Times (London, 1865), 59.Google Scholar
67 It was not, in fact, his first autobiography, but an expansion of an earlier and equally egotistical version, whose history exemplifies the Britton style. It first came out as a rambling preface to the third, supplementary volume of Beauties of Wiltshire, and was recycled at first as an independent memoir. Then it was picked up and reprinted by the Imperial Magazine, which explained to its readership, ‘In the history of literary industry, few instances will be found more impressively exemplary … [of] intellectual energy working its way, unprepared by education, and unaided by patronage, from painful obscurity to honourable eminence.’ The magazine changed Britton's text from first person to third, so as to make it into an independent narrative account, but otherwise altered nothing. Britton completed the performance by reprinting this nonsense, and circulating it as yet another advertisement for himself.
68 Letter, John Britton to (probably) Revd J. E. Jackson, 14th January 1854. W.A.N.H.S.
69 County societies were founded for Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire in 1844, for Norfolk in 1846, for Sussex, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1847. Piggott, , op. cit. (note 51). 175.Google Scholar
70 Letter, John Britton to Revd E. Wilton, 13th September 1851. W.A.N.H.S.
71 Letters, John Britton to Revd J. E. Jackson, 21st May and 14th September 1852. W.A.N.H.S.
72 ‘Mr Britton's collection of books, MSS., prints, drawings, &c, relating to Wiltshire’, undated cutting of spring 1853 in W.A.N.H.S. cuttings, vol. 5, f. 206.
73 Letters, John Britton to Revd J. E. Jackson, 15th April and 21st May 1853. W.A.N.H.S.
74 Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 144–6.Google Scholar
75 Lukis, W. C., ‘Report of the provisional committee’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. i (1854), 1.Google Scholar
76 Letter, John Britton to Revd J. E. Jackson, 14th September 1852. W.A.N.H.S.
77 ‘A list of articles exhibited in the temporary museum at the Town-hall, Devizes, October 13th, 1853’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. i (1854), 57–66.Google Scholar
78 Jones, , op. cit. (note 6), 127.Google Scholar
79 Ibid., 128.
80 Britton, , Beauties of Wiltshire …, III, 356–62Google Scholar; Foster, J. (ed.), Alumni Oxoniensis …, iv: 1715–1886 (Oxford, 1888), 1393Google Scholar; Judd, G., Members of Parliament 1254–1832 (New Haven, 1955), no. 4769Google Scholar; Pevsner, N. and Cherry, B., The Buildings of England: Wiltshire (Harmonds-worth, 1975), 241Google Scholar; H., V. C., Wiltshire, x, 177Google Scholar.
81 Britton, and Brayley, , op. cit. (note 44), 11, 199–203.Google Scholar
82 Britton, , op. cit. (note 41), dedication and 356–62.Google Scholar
83 Erlestoke Park sale catalogue, 1832. W.A.N.H.S.
84 Britton, John, letter, Gentleman's Mag. cii (August 1832), 104.Google Scholar
85 Chippindale, C., ‘The first Ancient Monuments Act, 1882, and its administration under General Pitt-Rivers’, J. B. A. A. cxxxvi (1983), 10.Google Scholar
