Was Mrs Elizabeth Campbell of Kilravock (1783-1861) the primary lady archaeologist in Scotland? Nicely, she may need a declare to the title. Though it’s notoriously onerous to pin down the ‘first particular person to …’ undertake any huge ranging, and vaguely outlined pursuit like ‘archaeology’.
What we do know is that Elizabeth and her daughter, Thomasina, type a uncommon mother-daughter investigative duo, recording and publishing not less than one prehistoric website within the Georgian period.
Younger life
Elizabeth was born at Kirkleatham, close to Redcar, in 1783. Her mother and father, Yorkshire politician Sir Charles Turner of Kirkleatham, MP, and her mom, Mary Shuttleworth, died whereas she was younger. Consequently, she was raised by her stepfather, Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810) on his property at Parlington, close to Leeds. Right here Elizabeth witnessed the sensible software of Gascoigne’s wide-ranging ‘Enlightened’ pursuits in historical past, agricultural enchancment and horticulture.
In April 1801, aged simply 18 Elizabeth married army officer William H Campbell (c1767-1811), a person in his mid-30s. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in August 1801, shortly after they had been married. As but, I’ve been unable to search out extra info on William’s heritage and youth. Their solely youngster, Thomasina Mary Anne Eliza Campbell was born in both 1804, or much less in all probability in 1806.
Through the Peninsular Wars, William was consistently on lively service with the thirty first Regiment in Sicily, Malta, and Spain. He died of fever in Portugal in 1811, forsaking his younger widow and daughter.
A house within the Highlands
By late 1828, Elizabeth was renting Kilravock Citadel, close to Nairn. It’s unclear what her hyperlink to the Highlands was and what introduced right here there. Nevertheless, we do know that she took a really pro-active position in managing ‘her’ fort insurance policies and residential farm.
Kilravock Citadel is a Class A listed constructing which dates again to the 1400s. Head over to Canmore to zoom in for extra element and data on Kilravock Citadel. © Crown Copyright: HES.
What we all know of Elizabeth and Thomasina’s archaeological explorations is because of one in all their neighbours. Historian, author and native landowner, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder had a Highland retreat round 14 miles away from the Campbell’s fort.
In July 1830, he printed ‘An Account of the Nice Floods in Morayshire in 1829 within the Province of Moray and adjoining Districts’. This publication describes the devastation brought on by the cataclysmic storms which hit north east Scotland in August 1829. There was mass flooding, big lack of life, and bridges had been swept away. Enormous tracts of land in Aberdeenshire, Angus and Banff had been beneath water ‘many miles in extent.’
Intriguingly, Lauder interspersed his account of the tragedy with historic anecdotes, together with Campbell’s excavations.
‘The Scottish Stonehenge’
The Clava Cairns, beside the River Nairn exterior Inverness, are among the best recognized teams of prehistoric tombs in Scotland. There are a number of clusters of early and late Bronze Age cairns of various kinds, together with surrounding stone circles. Over time, many antiquarian discoveries on the website had been the unintentional results of constructing new roads and drainage. Lauder known as this ‘the Scottish Stonehenge’.
Clava Cairns is one in all Scotland’s most evocative prehistoric websites. Take a better look on Canmore.© Crown Copyright: HES.
Clava belonged to the neighbouring property of Cantray, however Lauder explicitly states the dig was ‘by route of Mrs Campbell’. Elizabeth would have required the owner’s permission to discover it.
The precise dates when Campbell opened the tomb are obscure. The summer season of 1829 or the spring of 1830 are doubtless home windows of alternative. This may need been granted fairly readily, as each Cantray and Kilravock shared an element.
Lauder states he obtained a last-minute addition from Thomasina Campbell, which may be dated to mid-late July 1830, that included Elizabeth’s pottery illustrations. This ‘proto excavation report’ is actually among the many very earliest by any girls in Scotland – till even older ones are found! This late replace exhibits how decided the Campbells had been to publicise their discoveries extra broadly.
Learn all about it!
Sadly, we solely have Lauder’s abstract of Elizabeth’s phrases on Clava:
‘Druidical circles … The biggest of those … enclosing … an ideal cairn … was recently opened (by route, and beneath the superintendence of Mrs Campbell …) and a curious round residence was found … the wall converging … in a impolite dome … the muse being shaped of 14 giant stones … A passage leads inwards from the south’.
It appears that evidently Elizabeth intentionally focused one tomb for research. She took correct dimensions and drew the doorway and three fragments of a bronze age urn which might have held cremated stays. (The origin of the printed drawing of the dry-stone tomb passage continues to be being researched).
Girls had beforehand illustrated antiquities, however not like her, weren’t normally the principle instigators of ‘barrow digging’. Two feminine proponents had been even rarer.
It was ‘Miss Campbell’, in her mid-20s, who despatched the detailed description of the urn included because the appendix. She defined the clay vessel:
‘was about 18 inches beneath the earth, precisely within the centre of the circle … a amount of calcined bones had been in it … The underside is flat … the vase … enclosed in … clay fairly distinct from the pure soil’.
Regardless of these stays, Lauder interprets this passage grave as a spot of worship – a typical perception on the time. He additionally expects Elizabeth to proceed her ‘antiquarian investigations’ sooner or later.
Cairn conundrums
The Campbell’s exercise is now recognized to have been on the south-western cairn. Nonetheless, Lauder doesn’t particularly determine which monument she examined. This sadly precipitated many years’ price of confusion.
In 1857, authorized historian Cosmo Innes was the primary to misplace the location, regardless of being married to one of many Kilravock household. He wrote: ‘The jap … is the cairn … opened by Miss Campbell.’ Mistaken tomb, and flawed lady!
This error turned ‘reality’ in 1869, when the official Ordnance Survey cartographers misplaced the label ‘Urns Containing Calcined Bones discovered right here’. It seems beside the north jap cairn, moderately than the south western one. The surveyors hadn’t interviewed the precise house owners or farmers of Clava. As a substitute they relied on rumour from gentry who had been solely babies in 1830.
Ordinance Survey Map of Nairnshire printed in 1871, which accommodates the wrong labelling of the cairns. Reproduced with the permission of the Nationwide Library of Scotland. (Attribution 4.0 Worldwide (CC BY 4.0).
Eventually in 1884, civil engineer James Fraser interviewed ‘folks on the spot’, probably some surviving workmen. This allowed him to put the Campbells’ legacy accurately on the western cairn.
The archaeological exploration of Clava Cairns is convoluted to say the least. Throughout the centuries these has been a conflation of homeowners, antiquarians, finds and places. This excavation sequence requires additional unravelling!
Clava Cairns: an necessary website for trowelblazers
It’s additionally exceptional that no-one has commented on the quartet of feminine investigators who’ve explored this website. Within the early Nineteen Thirties, round a century after Elizabeth and Thomasina opened the south-western cairn, Kathleen Kennedy re-excavated the passage graves. Kennedy had studied beneath Professor Childe, a famend professor of archeology. He advisable Kennedy to hold out the work at Clava Cairns and he or she was appointed by The Workplace of Works. Sadly, Kennedy didn’t go on to work within the subject. Nevertheless, one in all Kennedy’s contemporaries and a fellow scholar of Prof Childe, Margaret Simpson, was doubtless the primary skilled (paid!) feminine archaeologist in Scotland. She turned the primary feminine Assistant Inspector of Historic Monuments in 1930.
Within the Nineteen Sixties Audrey Henshall, an knowledgeable in Neolithic chambered cairns, as soon as once more opened up the location. Henshall was one of many first girls in Scotland to turn into a full-time skilled archaeologist. She carried out surveys of round 600 Neolithic chambered cairns round Scotland.
Audrey Henshall (centre) pictured at the chambered cairn at Stanemore, Swona in 1981.© Courtesy of HES (Dr Raymond G Lamb Assortment).
Becoming in
The Campbells had been well-accepted by the landed lessons of Inverness and Nairn, attending the anticipated annual charitable, army and searching occasions of the season. They appeared on the ‘Northern Assembly’, a collection of horse races, and night entertainments, all through the 1830s and 40s. They had been additionally passionate horticulturalists, enhancing the plantings and insurance policies of Kilravock at their very own expense. Their much less standard pursuits may be detected – after the King of Saxony had seen the gardens in 1844, it was Thomasina who, actually, took the reins, and ‘drove His Majesty to Cawdor Citadel’!
Cawdor Citadel. © Courtesy of HES. Illustration in Views in Scotland.
As a substitute of giving her career as ‘impartial’, ‘personal means’, or ‘annuitant’, as was standard for wealthy widows, Elizabeth said she was a ‘light lady, farmer of 188 acres’, using 17, of whom 8 had been feminine. Like her stepfather, she selectively bred pigs and Highland cattle, which received prizes at agricultural exhibits.
Elizabeth Campbell died in 1861, so from 1863, Thomasina rented Moniack Citadel the place she ‘antiquarianised’ the massive rockery by putting in the Balblair Pictish sculptured stone.
Moniack Citadel © NOSAS: JS Bone Assortment. Courtesy of HES.
The Pictish stone combines Neolithic cup-marks, and the incised early-medieval determine of a male holding a sword or membership. It’s not recognized the place or why Miss Campbell collected this carving, nevertheless it stays at Moniack as a memento of her keep.
The Balblair Pictish stone turned a function in Thomasina’s backyard. Scheduled Monument Consent can be wanted for those who needed to maneuver the stone in the present day!
A vibrant life
Following a go to to Corsica, Thomasina printed ‘Notes on the Island of Corsica in 1868’, a guidebook for English guests and intending settlers. She turned deeply concerned in property growth and land possession in Ajaccio, whereas at all times selling it as a wholesome resort for British expatriates, and a quieter various to the busy French Riviera. Thomasina was a profitable businesswoman and entrepreneur, though I’m nonetheless investigating this era of her life. She retained huge cultural pursuits, and was one of many founders of the vacationer trade that also under-pins the Corsican financial system. As an impartial overseas lady, she and her business associates prompted various opinions, and a few controversy, among the many islanders. Thomasina died whereas on vacation in Geneva, in 1888, and it’s hoped a extra full account of her many-faceted actions will seem in the end.
In regards to the creator
Morag Cross is an impartial researcher and archaeologist, specialising in histories of buildings and land possession. Her archival analysis explores the surprising hyperlinks between beforehand unknown figures, particularly girls, and their social networks. She has labored on over 80 initiatives together with enterprise histories for the Waterproof coat Structure web site, Glasgow Council’s official WW1 web site, M74 industrial archaeology analysis, and Edinburgh’s India Buildings, Victoria St.
Learn Morag’s weblog on the “hidden girls” who formed Scotland’s streets.
