Sunday, January 6, 2008

The Skinner Diaries

The Reverend Skinner left three large iron bound chests to the British Museum of diaries many of which are valuable records of the drawings and excavations he made during his life. It is calculated that they run to 25000 pages, half of which relate to his native Somerset.
There is an ongoing project to publish some of his drawings in CD format - Cornwall, Devon, Hadrian Wall or the Wansdyke which will be listed by the British Library. This will enable researchers to access sets of specific localities. It is a long process and his pen and ink drawings are often very naive but also of course very informative.

ref; CBA for South West England.

One further note;
The Reverend William Lisle Bowles of Bremhill, apart from writing poetry, wrote The Parochial History of Bremhill, and also either published a separate pamphlet on the Stupendous Monuments of Antiquity in the Neighbourhood of Avebury, Silbury and Wansdike, or that these illustrations appeared in his Parochial History. One book appears to be in the local library Service.

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