STUKELEY (WILLIAM) – NEOLITHIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN Thirteen leaves of original drawings by antiquarian, natural philosopher and Fellow of the Royal Society William Stukeley (1687-1765), relating to Neolithic and Roman Britain, comprising: "The monument calld cheesewring in Cornwall... Mr Mason of Trinity Col: Camb thinks, this is natural"; "Main amber [Mên Amber] in Cornwall. The upper stone wh moves, is 6f. high..."; "a Druids house in Cornwall, called Trethevie" with a note of dimensions; "the camp by Basingstoke" The arch at Ariconium [Bury Hill, Herefordshire], verso with notes on the area; "View of Silchester Walls from the N.E. Corner/ Aug.5 1722"; transcriptions of various Roman funerary inscriptions, at Cirencester; the Julius Vitalis stone "found near Bath now in the wall at the East end of the cathedral", verso with roofscape of Bath including the Abbey; "St Marys chh Lincoln"; "Sr Rober Mostyns brought from beyond sea"; "...in Seignr Valetti's Collection, now in Engla[nd]"; "Inscription on a stone at the hermitage at Teni, verso with fragmentary notes on Amesbury and Stonehenge; "View of boro' bridg" with inscription "in the wall of the crown inn garden, next the road", verso with notes on travels in Yorkshire ("1 July 1740. Mr Gale, Mr Drake & I set out from York..."), 18 pages, pen, ink and wash, dust-staining, marks and discolouration, some fraying, 230 x 144mm. and smaller, Manuscript list of illustrations titled "Drawings to the Origin of Architecture; made april 1762", listing 41 items including "Noahs Temple under mount Ararat. Antediluvian manner, Genesis VIII.20", "a patriarchal Temple with a Cove on one side; like that at Stanton Drew Somersetshire." and "Stonehenge, the height of patriarchal Temples", etc., 6 pages, sewn, dust-staining and marks, paper covers, 190 x 155mm., 1762 'THE MONUMENT CALLD CHEESEWRING IN CORNWALL... MR MASON OF TRINITY COL: CAMB THINKS, THIS IS NATURAL': STUKELEY'S INFLUENTIAL WORK ON THE DRUIDS AND ANCIENT BRITISH SITES. Whilst Stukeley undertook several extensive tours of England from 1721 to 1724, there is no evidence that he travelled to Cornwall and it may be that our drawings, annotated by him, were taken from drawings supplied by William Borlase, whose Observations of the Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of Cornwall was published in 1754. In his preface, Borlase acknowledged the work that Stukeley had done on the subject of Ancient British sites, building on the suggestion, first mooted by John Aubrey, that the stone circles of the British Isles were built by druids, thus establishing '...the popular association of stone temples with druids in the public imagination. Some of his theories on patriarchal British druids influenced the work of William Blake, especially his Jerusalem...' (David Boyd-Haycock, ODNB). In July 1749, Stukeley requested information from Borlase on the classical geography of Cornwall and certain megalithic sites: '...At this time Stukeley was working on the MS. of Richard of Westminster (or Cirencester), published by him in 1757, a document then believed to contain a great deal of new information on Roman Britain, but much later exposed as an impudent forgery imposed upon Stukeley by its "discoverer", a young Dane named Charles Julius Bertram...'. It is known that Borlase sent him drawings of the Hurlers (St. Cleer), Boscawen-un (St. Buryan) and the Men-an-tol (Madron) and in response Stukeley asked that Borlase should supply him further drawings of other ancient landscape features (P.A.S. Pool, The Borlase-Stukeley Correspondence, peterpool.co.uk). Some of our sketches relating to Britain's Roman past are dated 1722, which coincides with Stukeley's involvement with the Society of the Roman Knights, a society which aimed 'to adorn & preserve the truly noble Monuments of the Romans in Britain, & the truley great & stupendous works of our British Ancestors ...' (Bodl. Oxf., MS Eng. misc. c.401 fol. 19, quoted in ODNB). Our view of Silchester, dated August 1722, was drawn on a trip with fellow Roman Knights Gerard Vandergucht and John Pine, which also took in Avebury and Stonehenge. Later in the year he embarked on another tour which included Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Kent, largely following Roman roads and published as Iter Romanum. The inscription taken from St Mary's Church, Lincoln was described by him as 'an ancient monumental stone' when reproduced in Itinerarium Curiosum (p.91). Stukeley's index to the "Origin of Architecture" in our collection may relate to his unpublished work on the development of sacred architecture, influenced by his work on Stonehenge, whereby he argued that oak groves were the first models of sacred architecture and that this was the model followed by the Druids (see Tessa Morrison, 'William Stukeley and the origins of architecture, PhD thesis online).