This biography was born when David Wright saw some Anglo-Saxon brooches found by Bryan Faussett (1720–76) in the Society of Antiquaries’ tercentenary exhibition, Making History: antiquaries in Britain 1707–2007. Wright’s assessment of his subject is that ‘for the biographer a life of Bryan Faussett as a Kentish clergyman would be moderately interesting; as a genealogist and heraldist more so; as an antiquarian and archaeologist almost compelling; but when all three are combined his cup fairly runs over’. For Wright there is the bonus of knowing at first hand the small part of Kent whose history, heraldry and buildings Faussett explored and recorded before he turned to archaeology.
As an archivist, Wright draws on the Faussett family archive to give a detailed account of the family and its home at Heppington House near Canterbury, Faussett’s education and his apparently undistinguished career as a clergyman. Faussett kept detailed financial records, which, along with his correspondence and the information preserved by his predilection for litigation, provide a detailed insight into the life of a Georgian clergyman.
Between 1767 and 1773 Faussett employed labourers to excavate hundreds of Anglo-Saxon graves at barrow cemeteries close to Heppington. It was common to open more than twenty graves a day, but, unlike his contemporaries, Faussett recorded what was found and the objects – or those that survived the experience – were taken home to be studied and displayed. This was a private pursuit. Although visitors were shown the finds, Faussett never lectured or published on them, so while it was known that he had found large quantities of Anglo-Saxon jewellery, notably the Kingston brooch, little detail was available. Faussett’s will decreed that everything should remain at Heppington, and for decades the only information available about his discoveries was in James Douglas’s Nenia Britannica (1793).
Eventually Charles Roach Smith rescued the situation. Having introduced himself to the Faussett family, he arranged for the 1844 Congress of the British Archaeological Association to visit Heppington and in 1853 he persuaded the family to offer the collection to the British Museum. The universal opprobrium heaped upon the trustees of the museum because of their lack of concern in acquiring the collection (or any other British antiquities) is widely seen as a turning point in the museum’s collecting policy. Instead, Joseph Mayer stepped up to buy the collection, put it on public display in Liverpool and fund its lavish publication by Roach Smith as Inventorium Sepulchrae in 1856.
Though well written, this book is not always well organised. Wright tends to treat all types of evidence as being of equal importance and the resulting mass of detail often breaks the thread of the narrative and leads to topics being introduced out of sequence. A firm editorial hand and the use of appendices would have improved the organisation, but if Wright is less confident with archaeology – the chapters on Anglo-Saxon burial are weak and his eulogising of Faussett as an archaeological pioneer because he kept records is unconvincing – it is because he gamely attempts to provide a balanced account for a wide readership.
That said, Wright succeeds in his ambition to write a biography that will bring Faussett’s archaeological work to national attention. Wright often treats Faussett as a Kentish hero, but the wider significance of this book is that it is only the second extended biography of an eighteenth-century English archaeologist: Stuart Piggott’s of William Stukeley (1687–1765) being the other (Piggott 1985). As such it contains important new materials for our understanding of the history of archaeological thought in Britain and beyond.
