It all began with an old photograph taken of my grandfather, as a young man, working in the garden of a big house. With the help of local historians, I discovered that the house where he was working was Limehurst House, on Buckley Street in the Limehurst area of Ashton under Lyne. (Buckley Street was eventually renamed as Treehouse Avenue when Limehurst Rural District Council ceased to exist in 1954).
I decided to research the families who had lived at Limehurst House through the years. Checking census returns online I came across the exotically named Aquila Dodgson and his family.
Who was Aquila Dodgson?
He certainly had an intriguing name. Mr Dodgson was a former Nonconformist minister who had to retire from preaching in the 1870s, due to the failure of his voice. He became a mill owner, in Oldham, and later he owned the Bardsley Vale Mill, in Ashton under Lyne, then a cotton spinning mill, which later became Thomas Kerfoot’s pharmaceutical chemists.
Timeline of Aquila Dodgson
Aquila Dodgson was born on 9 Sept 1829 in Elland, West Yorkshire, to Joshua Dodgson and Hannah Lightowler. In 1861 he was a boarder living with a family in Hull. He was described as a Minister of the United Methodist Free Church.
Aquila married Jane Oldroyd in 1863 in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. By 1871 the couple, with three young sons, were living at 39 Spring St, Oldham. The census record gives his occupation as “cotton doubler and occasional Independent preacher”.
By 1881 the Dodgson family, Aquila and Jane plus three sons and a daughter, with a governess and two servants, were living at Limehurst House, Buckley Street, Ashton under Lyne. Aquila’s occupation was recorded as “Cotton spinner employing 85 males and 41 females”. At the time of the next census in 1891, the family were still at Limehurst House, and Aquila was still the owner of Bardsley Vale Mill. Ten years later the family had moved to Leeds and were living on Kirkstall Lane. Aquila was now recorded as a retired cotton spinner.
An active retirement
Aquila Dodgson had a wide range of interests. He was a collector of old coins as well as an antiquarian. Elected Honorary Librarian of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society in 1902, he remained in post until his death. In 1907-8 he was the President of the Leeds Astronomical Society. In the publications index of the Thoresby Society, the Historical Society for Leeds, founded in 1889, there is an account of a local find of over 7000 Roman coins in 1905, written by Aquila Dodgson.
A serious Egyptologist
However, he is most well known as a keen amateur Egyptologist. The Civil War in America, 1861-65, had cut off a source of raw cotton so Lancashire, the centre of the cotton spinning industry, looked to Egypt as a new source. There was a natural connection between the textile industry, cotton production and Egypt as a source of the actual cotton plants. The British conquest of Egypt had taken place in 1882 and established firm British influence over the country. There was a growing interest in Egyptology due to the excavations by Sir Flinders Petrie in the 1880s. Dodgson was a supporter of Flinders Petrie and Amelia Edwards, a journalist and patron of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Dodgson accompanied Petrie to Egypt in 1891-2. Dodgson has been described as “one of the key players in the history of British Egyptology.”
Some of Dodgson’s collection of artefacts from Egypt have ended up at the Manchester Museum, and other items are housed in Leeds. The Dodgson Collection of Egyptian Antiquities and Coptic Textiles is housed at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Egyptologists abounded in the North West
I wondered, when I read of Dodgson’s great interest in Egyptology, whether he had known another family, the Bradburys, with a similar interest who lived less than a mile away at Riversvale Hall, just across the road from Dodgson’s Bardsley Vale Mill. This family was that of Charles Timothy Bradbury, also a mill-owner.
Bradbury’s daughter Kate had accompanied Amelia Edwards on her lecture tour of the USA and was also a keen Egyptologist. She married Francis Llewellyn Griffith in 1896. He had trained under Flinders Petrie and taught himself ancient Egyptian whilst at Queens College, Oxford, in the 1880s. In 1901 Kate Griffith and her husband were living at Riversvale Hall. The census record describes Francis Llewellyn Griffith as an ‘Egyptologist”. Kate died aged 48 in 1902 leaving a substantial sum of money. Griffith inherited his father-in-law’s estate after the death of Charles Bradbury in 1907. This inheritance endowed the study of Egyptology at Oxford University. By the terms of his will after his death in 1934, the Griffith Institute at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford was established.
It was when I came across a conference paper given by Brenda E. Moon in 2005 called “A Fearful Outbreak of Egyptology in the North West”, that my suspicion that the Dodgsons and the Bradburys were acquainted, was confirmed. Both Charles Bradbury, father of Kate, and Aquila Dodgson were staunch supporters of the Albion Congregational Church in Ashton under Lyne. The Albion church was, in the 1880s, the cultural centre of the town. It had wealthy patrons who were keen to inform and educate the townsfolk. Large audiences were attracted to the Literary Society held at the Albion schools and were often addressed by members who had travelled to Egypt.
Dodgson as a collector and museum donor
In 1882 Aquila Dodgson wrote to the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum to ask for advice about a papyrus he had acquired. It had been given to Dodgson by another Congregationalist Minister, Rev. Elkanah Armitage of Oldham. The papyrus showed the malediction of a pagan mother upon her son for embracing Christianity. It is still known as “Papyrus Dodgson” today, and is housed in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Dodgson kept in close touch with Amelia Edwards. He informed her of the ‘scarabs, mummy and stelae’ at Owen’s College, Manchester (now Manchester University). The Dodgson Collection of Egyptian Antiquities and Coptic Textiles is housed in Queen’s College at Melbourne university.
Flinders Petrie himself, ‘the father of Egyptian archaeology’, stayed with the Dodgson family at Limehurst House in August 1887. Earlier that year, Petrie had written to Dodgson from Egypt: “Before I left England, I sent up a few fine Egyptian things to the Manchester Fine Art Exhibition on loan”. Otherwise known as the Royal Jubilee Exhibition, it was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra, in May 1887, at Old Trafford in Manchester. Petrie urged Dodgson to go out to Egypt and stay for three months. Dodgson hesitated, no doubt thinking of his wife having to cope with rather frugal conditions. However, in the winter of 1891, Aquila and Jane Dodgson made the trip up the Nile by steamer, visiting Petrie who was at Tell-el-Amarna, an important archaeological site.
By 1901 Aquila and Jane Dodgson had left Ashton to live in Leeds. They were living at South Leigh, Kirkstall Lane, Headingley, with two adult children, Edwin (36) and Rachel (29). By 1911 Aquila was a widower, living with his unmarried son Edwin, at South Leigh. Aquila Dodgson died in August 1919 at the age of 90.
Source used and recommended for further reading:
Hilary Forrest “Manufacturers, Mummies and Manchester: Two Hundred Years of interest in and study of Egyptology in the Greater Manchester area” British Archeological Report No 532, 2011. (book, no e-version)
