William StukeleyFRS FSA (7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765) was an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of archaeology, he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire. He published over twenty books on archaeology and other subjects during his lifetime. Born in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, as the son of a lawyer, Stukeley worked in his father's law business before attending Saint Benet's College, Cambridge (now Corpus Christi College). In 1709, he began studying medicine at St Thomas' Hospital, Southwark, before working as a general practitioner in Boston, Lincolnshire.
From 1710 until 1725, he embarked on annual tours of the countryside, seeking out archaeological monuments and other features that interested him; he wrote up and published several accounts of his travels. In 1717, he returned to London and established himself within the city's antiquarian circles. In 1718, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and became the first secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1721, he became a Freemason and, in 1722, co-founded the Society of Roman Knights, an organisation devoted to the study of Roman Britain. In the early 1720s, Stukeley developed a particular interest in Stonehenge and Avebury, two prehistoric stone circles in Wiltshire. He visited them repeatedly, undertaking fieldwork to determine their dimensions.
In 1726, Stukeley relocated to Grantham, Lincolnshire, where he married. In 1729 he was ordained as a cleric in the Church of England and appointed vicar of All Saints' Church in Stamford, Lincolnshire. He was a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Wake, who encouraged him to use his antiquarian studies to combat the growth of deism and freethought in Britain. To this end, Stukeley developed the belief that Britain's ancient druids had followed a monotheistic religion inherited from the Biblical Patriarchs; he called this druidic religion "Patriarchal Christianity". He further argued that the druids had erected the stone circles as part of serpentine monuments symbolising the Trinity.
In 1747, he returned to London as rector of St George the Martyr, Holborn. In the last part of his life, he became instrumental in British scholarship's acceptance of Charles Bertram's forged Description of Britain[1] and wrote one of the earliest biographies of Sir Isaac Newton. Stukeley's ideas influenced various antiquaries throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in addition to artists like William Blake, although these had been largely rejected by archaeologists by the second half of the 19th century. Stukeley was the subject of multiple biographies and academic studies by scholars like Stuart Piggott, David Boyd Haycock and Ronald Hutton.
^"The Description of Britain, also known by its Latin name De Situ Britanniae (On the Situation of Britain), was a literary forgery perpetrated by Charles Bertram on the historians of England. It purported to be a 15th-century manuscript by the English monk Richard of Westminster, including information from a lost contemporary account of Britain by a Roman general (dux), new details of the Roman roads in Britain in the style of the Antonine Itinerary, and "an antient map" as detailed as (but improved upon) the works of Ptolemy. Bertram disclosed the existence of the work through his correspondence with the antiquarian William Stukeley by 1748, provided him "a copy" which was made available in London by 1749, and published it in Latin in 1757. By this point, his Richard had become conflated with the historical Richard of Cirencester. The text was treated as a legitimate and major source of information on Roman Britain from the 1750s through the 19th century, when it was progressively debunked".
WilliamStukeley FRS FSA (7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765) was an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the...
before the suppression of chantries and hospitals. The antiquarian WilliamStukeley reported that his father removed the ruins from the site which is now...
Stukeley is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: WilliamStukeley Thomas Stukley (alternate spelling) This page lists people with the surname...
the 19th century. Meanwhile, antiquarians such as William Camden, John Aubrey and WilliamStukeley had begun to take an interest in the monuments. Fuller...
religious and practical reasons. The antiquarians John Aubrey and WilliamStukeley took an interest in Avebury during the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively...
structures on the islands. The name 'cursus' was suggested in 1723 by WilliamStukeley, the antiquarian, who compared the Stonehenge cursus to a Roman chariot-racing...
eleventh-century writers are "stones supported in the air". In 1740, WilliamStukeley notes: "Pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire ... I doubt...
appears in a letter written in 1754 by the English antiquary WilliamStukeley. Stukeley wrote that, "This mighty wall [Hadrian's wall] of four score miles...
of gravity at any single moment, acquaintances of Newton (such as WilliamStukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal...
'stone') and was first used in its modern archaeological sense by WilliamStukeley. Other famous trilithons include those found in the Megalithic temples...
William Camden's 1637 work Britannica, linked the Giant with a supposed minor Saxon deity named by Camden as "Hegle"; In the 1760s WilliamStukeley recorded...
barrow, is a type of tumulus identified as such by both John Aubrey and WilliamStukeley. In the United Kingdom, they take the form of a circular mound or mounds...
Grade I listed building. Isaac Newton recounted to his contemporary WilliamStukeley how an apple tree in the orchard inspired him to work on his law of...
as an international power. Antiquarians and archaeologists, notably WilliamStukeley, were conducting excavations of megalithic sites, including Stonehenge...
the stone into pieces of a suitable size for use in construction. WilliamStukeley wrote that sarsen is "always moist and dewy in winter which proves...
Stonehenge the work of Druids. This view was greatly popularised by WilliamStukeley. Aubrey also contributed the first measured drawings of the site, which...
temple" mentioned by Diodorus with the Callanish Stones. In 1743, WilliamStukeley described the stone circle as a druid circle and the avenue like a...
belonged to the Eleanor Cross. A letter from the 18th-century antiquary WilliamStukeley (now untraceable) is alleged to have stated that he had one of the...
In the early 18th century, the site was recorded by the antiquarian WilliamStukeley although the stones were destroyed by local farmers in the 1720s. The...
rector, the Rev. John South, as a curiosity. Darwin communicated with WilliamStukeley who obtained the fossil for the Royal Society and described it in a...
made for the factoid that the Great Wall is visible from the Moon. WilliamStukeley mentioned this claim in his letter dated 1754, and Henry Norman made...
David Boyd (2002). "Chapter 7: Much Greater, Than Commonly Imagined.". WilliamStukeley: Science, Religion and Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England. Woodbridge...
his notebooks, the first wide audience for this idea were readers of WilliamStukeley (1687–1765). It is incorrectly believed that John Toland (1670–1722)...
with WilliamStukeley over the antiquity and imagery of the carvings on the walls of the recently discovered cave at Royston. He attacked Stukeley's claim...
University. Another early printed reference to Stilton cheese came from WilliamStukeley in 1722. Daniel Defoe in his 1724 work A Tour thro' the Whole Island...
work was picked up by another antiquarian in the following century, WilliamStukeley (1687–1765), who had studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge before...
it may have extended further to the south-west beyond the stones. WilliamStukeley recorded the site in the 18th century when it was only partially destroyed...
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