Sir William Gell was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 classical archaeologist and illustrator.

Life

Born at Hopton

Hopton, Derbyshire

Hopton is a hamlet in the English county of Derbyshire.It is south west of Wirksworth and at the northern end of Carsington Water.The village had a long association with the Gell family who had extensive lead mining interests in the Wirksworth area and lived at Hopton Hall...

 in Derbyshire

Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...

, the son of Philip Gell and Dorothy Milnes (daughter and coheir of William Milnes of Aldercar Park). The Gell family was one of the oldest families in England with a tradition of service in the Army, Navy, Parliament and the Church going back to 1209, in the reign of King John. His great grandfather was the parliamentarian Sir John Gell

Sir John Gell, 1st Baronet

Sir John Gell, 1st Baronet was a Parliamentarian politician and military figure in the English Civil War.-Background:...

 and his uncle was Admiral John Gell. Gell was educated at Derby School

Derby School

Derby School was a school in Derby in the English Midlands from 1160 to 1989. It had an almost continuous history of education of over eight centuries. For most of that time it was a grammar school for boys. The school became co-educational and comprehensive in 1974 and was closed in 1989...

 and Emmanuel College

Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...

, Cambridge. He matriculated there in 1793, took a BA

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 degree in 1798 and an MA in 1804, and was elected a fellow of Emmanuel.

William Gell was a great friend of Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...

, Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

 and Lord Byron. He wrote many books, most of them illustrated with his own sketches. In 1801, at the age of 24, he was sent on his first diplomatic mission to Greece where he fixed the site of Troy at Bournabiski.
Lord Byron mentions him in his work 'English Bards' thus:

From 1804 to 1806 he travelled in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 and the neighbouring islands. He was in 1807 elected a Member of the Society of Dilettanti and a Fellow of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

. In 1811 the Society of Dilettanti commissioned him to explore Greece and Asia Minor

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

. These travels resulted in several publications, e.g. Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca

Ithaca

Ithaca or Ithaka is an island located in the Ionian Sea, in Greece, with an area of and a little more than three thousand inhabitants. It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. It lies off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and...

 and Itinerary of Greece, with a Commentary on Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

 and Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

. With these publications he achieved fame in the scholarly circles as a classical topographer. He went with Princess (afterwards Queen) Caroline

Caroline of Brunswick

Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was the Queen consort of King George IV of the United Kingdom from 29 January 1820 until her death...

 to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 in 1814 as one of her chamberlains. He gave evidence in her favour on 6 October 1820, at her trial before the House of Lords, stating that he had left her service merely on account of a fit of the gout and had seen no impropriety between her and her courtier Bergami. However, in letters of 1815 and 1816, written under such pseudonyms as 'Blue Beard', 'Adonis' and 'Gellius', he related bits of scandal about the Queen. He was Knight

Knight Bachelor

The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

ed on 11 May 1814. Gell was a close friend of Keppel Richard Craven

Keppel Richard Craven

Hon. Keppel Richard Craven was a British traveller and dilettante.Craven was the third and youngest son of William Craven and Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, daughter of the 4th Earl of Berkeley...

 and travelled around Italy with him. From 1820 until his death, he resided in Rome, where he painted. He had another house in Naples, where he received visitors including his particular friends Sir William Drummond

William Drummond of Logiealmond

Sir William Drummond of Logiealmond was a Scottish diplomat and Member of Parliament, poet and philosopher. His book Academical Questions is arguably important in the development of the ideas of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.-Career:In 1795 he was MP for St. Mawes, and in the...

, the Hon. Keppel Craven, Lady Blessington and Sir Walter Scott.

Although crippled by gout, Sir William took Scott to Pompeii and showed him around the excavations. After Scott's death, Sir William drew up an account of their conversations in Naples, part of which is printed in Lockhart's 'Life of Scott'. It was then that he published some of his best known archaeological work including Pompeiana and The Topography of Troy.

Gell died at Naples in 1836 and was buried in the English Cemetery, Naples

English Cemetery, Naples

The English Cemetery, Il Cimitero degli Inglesi, or more correctly, Il Cimitero acattolico di Santa Maria delle Fede, is located near Piazza Garibaldi, Naples, Italy...

. On his death he left all his personal belongings to Craven.

His numerous drawings of classical ruins and localities, executed with great detail and exactness, are preserved in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

. Gell was a thorough dilettante

Amateur

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....

, fond of society and possessed of little real scholarship. Nonetheless his topographical works became recognized text-books at a time when Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 and even Italy were but superficially known to English travellers. He was a fellow of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 and the Society of Antiquaries of London

Society of Antiquaries of London

The Society of Antiquaries of London is a learned society "charged by its Royal Charter of 1751 with 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'." It is based at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London , and is...

, and a member of the Institute of France and the Royal Academy in Berlin

Prussian Academy of Sciences

The Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin on 11 July 1700, four years after the Akademie der Künste or "Arts Academy", to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer.-Origins:...

.

His best-known work is Pompeiana; the Topography, Edifices and, Ornaments of Pompeii, published between 1817 and 1832, in the first part of which he was assisted by J. P. Gandy. It was followed in 1834 by the Topography of Rome and its Vicinity. He wrote also Topography of Troy and its Vicinity (1804); Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca (1807); Itinerary of Greece, with a Commentary on Pausanias and Strabo (1810); and Itinerary of the Morea (1816). Although these works have been superseded by later publications, they continue to provide valuable information for the study of classical topography. He is, together with his friends Edward Dodwell

Edward Dodwell

Edward Dodwell was an Irish painter, traveller and a writer on archaeology.Dodwell was born in Ireland and belonged to the same family as Henry Dodwell, the theologian, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge....

 and Keppel Richard Craven

Keppel Richard Craven

Hon. Keppel Richard Craven was a British traveller and dilettante.Craven was the third and youngest son of William Craven and Lady Elizabeth Berkeley, daughter of the 4th Earl of Berkeley...

, by some modern scholars seen as the founder of the study of the historical topography of the hinterland of Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

. His works and notebooks proved very valuable for the topographical studies done by Thomas Ashby

Thomas Ashby

Thomas Ashby FBA was a British archaeologist.-Family:He was the only child of Thomas Ashby , and his wife, Rose Emma, daughter of Apsley Smith...

 at the beginning of the 20th century.

Works

• A Tour in the Lakes Made in 1797, [Edited by W. Rollinson, published 1986]
• The Topography of Troy and its vicinity illustrated and explained by drawings and descriptions etc.. London, 1804
• The Geography and Antiquities of Ithaca. London, 1807
• The Itinerary of Greece, with a commentary on Pausanias and Strabo, and an account of the Monuments of Antiquity at present existing in that country, compiled in the years 1801, 2, 5, 6 etc.. London, 1810. [2nd ed. containing a hundred routes in Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, 1827]
• The Itinerary of the Morea, being a description of the Routes of that Peninsula. London, 1817
• Vievs in Barbary - taken in 1813. London, 1815
• Pompeiana. The Topography of Edifices and Ornaments of Pompeii. 2 vols. London, 1817-8. [New ed. 1824. Further edition by Gell alone incorporating the results of latest excavations. London 1832 and 1852]
• Narrative of a Journey in the Morea. London, 1823
• Le Mura di Roma disegnate sa Sir W. Gell, illustrates con testo note da A. Nibby. Rome, 1820
• Probestücke von Städtemauern des alten Griechenlands ... Aus dem Englischen übersetzt. Munich, 1831
• The Topography of Rome and its Vicinity with Map". 2 vols. London, 1834. [Rev. and enlarged by Edward Henry Banbury. London 1846]
• Analisi storico-topografico-antiquaria della carta de' dintorni di Roma secondo le osservazione di Sir W. Gell e del professore A. Nibby. Rome 1837 [2nd ed. 1848]

Further reading

• Clay, Edith (ed.) -Sir William Gell in Italy: Letters to the Society of Dilettanti, 1831-1835. London, 1976
• Wallace-Hadrill, A. -"Roman Topography and the Prism of Sir William Gell", in Haselberger, L. & J. Humphrey (eds.) Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation, Visualization, Imagination. Portsmouth, RI, 2006, p. 285-296

External links