John Skinner (archaeologist)

The Rev. John Skinner (1772–1839) was a parish vicar and amateur antiquarian and archaeologist operating mainly in the area of Bath and the villages of northern Somerset in the early nineteenth century.

Life

Skinner was born in Claverton and educated at Oxford, before becoming vicar of Camerton, Somerset from 1800 to 1839. He excavated numerous antiquities, especially barrows, such as those at Priddy, Stoney Littleton and the site which later became RAF Charmy Down; and he made visits for antiquarian purposes to many places.

He carried excavations at Priddy Nine Barrows and Ashen Hill Barrow Cemeteries opening many of the barrows identified cremation burials in an oval cyst which was covered by a flat stone just below where ground level would have been in the Bronze Age. He also uncovered bronze daggers and spear head, decorative amber beads, a bronze ring and a small incense cup.

Before his role as the vicar of Camerton from 1800 to 1839, he worked in a lawyers office.

Writings

His journals (1803–34), published many years after his death, are reckoned to be an important historical document, and they are preserved at the British Library. He also left other manuscripts (The Diary Junction), and published accounts of a West Country tour (1797), Hadrian's Wall (1801) and the isle of Anglesey (1802). His 1802 visit to Anglesey to see the island's Celtic remains, began by rowing across the Menai Strait to land at Llanidan. His view was that the Old Church of St Nidan "seems superior to the generality of Welsh buildings of the kind", with its double roof and two bells, but he also said that "the interior of the building has little to attract notice".

His tour of Wales in 1835, when he was 63, now consists of 4 bound volumes comprising descriptive text (rather difficult to read) and nearly 750 sketches, an average of 15 a day, starting with coastal scenes taken when on the packet from Bristol to Swansea, landscapes, castles, abbeys, cromlechs, inscribed stones and towns, but rarely mansions. His obsession with Roman roads is reflected in the illustrations – any road which was reasonably straight was sketched and commented on.

Death

Skinner committed suicide by shooting himself in 1839, despite which he may have been buried in consecrated ground at Camerton.

Further reading

• Coombs, Howard and Arthur N. Bax, eds (1930) Journal of a Somerset rector: John Skinner, A.M., antiquary, 1772–1839. Parochial affairs of the parish of Camerton, 1822–1832. British Library mss. nos. 33673-33728. London: John Murray. [Revised and enlarged edn entitled Journal of a Somerset rector, 1803–1834: parochial affairs of the Parish of Camerton British Museum manuscripts no. 33635-33728 & EG 3099F-3123F by Howard and Peter Coombs, Bath: Kingsmead 1971. New edn, same eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984.]
• Jones, Roger (1999) John Skinner's Visit to the Channel Islands: Guernsey, August 1827. Review of the Guernsey Society (Spring 1999).
• Skinner, John (1803–34) Journals. MSS. British Library Add Mss, 33633-33728; subsequent tours are in British Library, Egerton Mss. 3099–3119
• Jones, Roger,(editor), West Country tour : being the diary of a tour through the counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall in 1797 by John Skinner, (Ex Libris Press, Bradford on Avon, 1985). Based on British Library Add. Mss. 33635.
• Skinner, John, (edited and transcribed by Rev John Fisher) "Ten Days Tour in Anglesey, 1802", published as a supplement to Archaeologia Cambrensis, July 1908, based on British Library Add. MSs. 33636; copy (of original)in National Library of Wales MS 21031.
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