The Uncomplimentary Perspectives of John Britton

In the Society of Antiquaries in London are the most amazing volumes, the c19 scrapbooks of Canon John Edward Jackson. Divided into parishes, stuck into the pages are correspondence, articles, sketches, posters, early photographs, notes and much more which Jackson thought helpful to his work on the local history of Wiltshire.

Kington St Michael Church

In 1858, Jackson used this miscellany to write a history of the village of Kington St Michael. The relevant pages of the scrapbook on Kington reveal Jackson corresponded with another antiquarian, John Britton, who had been born in the village in 1771. Britton wrote on Kington in his own work and was not always complimentary. ‘I am sorry’, Britton wrote in his autobiography, ‘I can say nothing in favour of the habits and manners either of the farmers of this village or the poor people. All have been neglected, and are grossly ignorant, in every way.’

In Jackson’s scrapbook, I found some new sources from Britton on the village. One story Jackson noted down in his spidery handwriting he neglected to publish- with very good reason. ‘In the year 1848, Mr Britton being at Chippenham for the meeting of the Wilts Society came to visit me at Leigh Delamere. He had not been at his native place, Kington for 40 years. As I was driving him to the village, he became very silent, as we approached his birthplace he lifted up his hands and said “What a hole!”’.

Kington St Michael Church

I think (hope) that Britton was referring to the cottage where he was brought up in some poverty and not the village itself. I, personally, find Kington St Michael a beautiful place. The same may not have been true of Britton’s childhood home. It was demolished a few years after his anecdote. It is, nonetheless, an interesting thought this Local History Month that historians are not always nice about the places they know and research.