ERNEST WESTLAKE (1855-1922) FOUNDER MEMBER of the HAMPSHIRE FIELD CLUB by J B DELAIR
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Proc. Hampsh. Field Club Archaeol. Soc. 41, 1985, 37-44 ERNEST WESTLAKE (1855-1922) FOUNDER MEMBER OF THE HAMPSHIRE FIELD CLUB By J B DELAIR ABSTRACT Ernest Westlake (1855-1922) was a prolific field naturalist and one of the founding members of the Hampshire Field Club. A short biographical sketch is presented which concentrates on his geological and archaeological activities. Much of this account is based on Westlake's recently discovered field notebooks and memoranda, preserved at his home at Godshill, near Fordingbridge. It is appropriate that in its centenary year the Born on November 16th, 1855, at Ford Hampshire Field Club should recall the five ingbridge, Ernest was the son of Thomas naturalists who, on March 28th, 1885, Westlake (1826-1892) - Quaker proprietor of a launched it firmly on the course it still follows. successful sail-cloth manufacturing firm in These were T W Shore, W Whitaker, E that town - and Hannah Sophia Neave (died Westlake, the Rev W L W Eyre, and the Rev T 1857). His uncles were William Colston Woodhouse (Colenutt 1944). Westlake (died 1893) and Richard Westlake Of these, Westlake is, or until recently has (died 1915). been,' the least well known, for unlike Shore Thomas Westlake's commercial who became intimately associated with the commitments were such that he could never Hartley Institute in Southampton and indulge his very considerable scientific inter Whitaker who rose to eminence in the Geo ests to his satisfaction, even though he built a logical Society, he was of an essentially small observatory to accommodate an equa- retiring disposition and spent much of his life torially-mounted 122 inch reflecting telescope (at Fordingbridge) engaged in extensive pri (made by Calver), and for many years kept vate field studies, of which most have never exact records of local daily temperatures, been published. Indeed, except for various rainfall, etc, the majority of which were duly brief references to him in the scattered printed in the local press (Westlake 1892). It publications. of certain contemporaries, was with considerable encouragement, Westlake has remained an almost forgotten therefore, that Thomas advised Ernest to figure of Hampshire's Victorian past, and it pursue the scientific career denied to himself was not until the present writer's fortuitous upon admitting that, after a year or so in the discovery in 1980 of the survival of Westlake's family business, Ernest apparently possessed field notebooks and memoranda at Godshill no aptitude for commerce at all. near Fordingbridge 'that the true scope of this Thus it was that Ernest entered University extraordinary Hampshire naturalist's College, London, to study, among other endeavours became apparent. Subsequently, a subjects, geology and mineralogy under general review of Westlake's geological and Thomas Huxley and John Tyndall. Westlake's archaeological activities was produced in a surviving student's notes show that he met or specialist journal (Delair 1981). At the time, attended lectures by such eminent Victorian however, it was not possible to do more than geologists as John - Morris and Joseph hint at the extent of Westlake's other interests. Prestwich, and developed a keen interest in In order to remedy this situation, there follows botony through the enthusiasm of Prof Ralph a short and perhaps long overdue biographical Meldola. Ernest did not proceed to a degree sketch of this ill-known founder member of the but, as his later activities reveal, left London Hampshire Field Club - Ernest Westlake, with a keenly developed sense of the naturalist and prehistorian extraordinary. importance of fieldwork and of the methods 38 HAMPSHIRE FIELD CLUB AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 'ViU't •HIJfTRHHl X. WM Fig 1. Krnest Wcstlake, about 1910. DELAIR: ERNEST WESTLAKE, FOUNDER MEMBER 39 necessary for pursuing it effectively. Indeed, in today. Through remarkable energy and all that he subsequently undertook, it is clear diligence, Westlake visited all the British that Ernest was pre-eminently a field scientist Chalk exposures he could reach, even those as who preferred facts to theories. distant from Fordingbridge as Beer (Devon) Returning to live at the family home Flamborough (Yorkshire), Eastbourne (Kent), (Oaklands House) in Fordingbridge, geology Norwich (Norfolk), and Ireland. He also made became one of Ernest's ruling passions; and, trips to France to study the Chalk at Le Havre being released through his father from the and other French localities. Improvements problem of actually having to earn a living, he made to the railway network during those was able to devote virtually all his time to the years, especially the Meon valley line, that subject. In 1877 he became a member of the from Andover to Stockbridge and Romsey, Geologists' Association (Anon 1923) and, two that from Alderbury (Wiltshire) to West years later, was elected a Fellow of the Geo Moors near Wimbourne (Dorset), and others logical Society of London (Sollas 1923). From at Micheldever and around Winchester, the late 1870s onwards, Westlake made innum entailed extensive cutting through Chalk and erable visits to • museums, private fossil Tertiary deposits, and provided splendid collections elsewhere, and to coastal and opportunities for fieldwork. That Westlake inland geological sites all over southern wasted none of these is clear from his notes Britain (and also some abroad), undertaking in and the suites of fossils obtained from these the process the detailed measuring and exposures. drawing of cliff, quarry, and well exposures, Westlake's investigations were often most and road and railway cuttings. This work thorough, arid included such details as the dip embraced the collecting of suites of fossils and strike of strata and their relative from the many horizons and sites examined. In elevations above mean sea-level. The huge due course, Ernest's observations filled many numbers of fossils collected enabled him to notebooks (still extant) while, concurrently, an prove the existence of certain Chalk horizons enormous collection of fossils (now divided at particular localities for the first time and between the Geology Department of permitted the correlation of specific zones in Southampton University and the Salisbury the Chalk exposed at many widely sundered and South Wilts Museum) was amassed - both lcoations. Many of these were Hampshire by personal collecting and acquisitions from sites. One such was Stoke Hill near St Mary others. Bourne; Westlake's observations there were Several of these records are of more than published by Joseph Stevens in the late 1880s passing interest. Measurements and careful (Stevens 1888), their accuracy being confirmed drawings of chalk stacks at Studland Bay, in 1906 by H Osborne White. Westlake also Dorset, for example, constitute valuable corrected certain of Prof Barrois's earlier information about their precise proportions statements about British Chalk zones at spe during a period before subsequent erosion cific localities. These corrections, which were altered and, in one instance, demolished them. later confirmed by Jukes Browne (Jukes The detailed sequences of deposits in quarries, Browne 1908), had been mostly embodied in a brickpits, and cliffs - often measured to the remarkable tabular summary of Upper nearest inch - also represent irreplaceable Cretaceous fossils from England and Ireland records of exposures either no longer issued by Westlake (Westlake 1888) just one accessible or now greatly altered. Large num year after the publication of his paper on an bers of Hampshire sites figure in these records. unusual Chalk terebratulid in C J Read's Early in the 1880s, Westlake became espe collection at Salisbury (Westlake 1887a). cially interested in the zones and fossils of the The significance of Westlake's Hampshire Chalk Formation, which, at that time, had not and Wiltshire Chalk researches was acknow been worked out in the detail familiar to us ledged by several contemporary professionals 40 HAMPSHIRE FIELD CLUB AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (including Reid 1903; Jukes Browne 1904, from different periods of prehistory. Thus, the 1908). Indeed, many lists of Chalk fossils Fisherton finds were correlated with others recorded from particular Hampshire and from Menchcourt in France, and those from Wiltshire exposures by these authors were Milford Hill with those from St Acheul, also in based largely upon Westlake's previous field France (Codrington 1870). All the implements work at those localities. were assigned to the Old Stone (Palaeolithic) But Westlake's enquiring mind ranged far Age, which, geologically speaking, largely falls beyond the problems of the Chalk Formation, within the Pleistocene period. x and as early as 1882 we find him, jointly with T Between 1879 and 1889, Benjamin.Harrison W Shore, presenting an account to the British of Ightham, Kent, discovered many crudely Association of a then recently sunk artesian chipped flints in high Plateau Gravels. He well at Southampton (Shore and Westlake urged that the chipping had been effected 1883; Reid 1902b). His notebooks for this and artificially, a view supported by Sir Joseph subsequent years contain details of numerous Prestwich who later described Harrison's finds other well sections inspected in Hampshire, (Prestwich 1889, 1891). Accordingly, an earlier Dorset, Wiltshire, and elsewhere. The (pre-Pleistocene) Eolithic Age was advocated following year saw Westlake publish a very as having preceded the Palaeolithic, and the able summary of geological phenomena in the alleged antiquity of Man was extended vicinity of Fordingbridge (Westlake 1883), an backwards into the Pliocene period. During account amplified in 1887 (Westlake 1887b) 1890 and 1894, Blackmore discovered several and again in 1908 (Westlake 1908). Another 'eoliths', as these crudely chipped flints were version of the same account, in which the called, at Alderbury in gravels 180 feet above different gravel terraces of the Avon valley the level of the Avon (Westlake 1902), and the were identified for the first time, was printed possibility that evidence could be found in the privately in 1889 (Westlake 1889; Reid and Avon valley for the existence of Pliocene Man Dixon 1899).