Newcastle University

John Horsley was one of the eighteenth-century’s great thinkers and antiquarians. His Britannia Romana, published in 1732, included the first detailed account of Hadrian’s Wall and remains a crucial source of information. In this lecture, Professor Lawrence Keppie examines the background to the publication, the intellectual rivalries of the time, and how Horsley gathered archaeological information on a dangerous frontier.

Horsley’s archaeological fieldwork has largely been reconstructed on the basis of his published monograph. This lecture will draw on unpublished correspondence in Horsley’s own hand to Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Midlothian; documents which are on loan to the National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh. In conjunction with Horsley's better-known correspondence with, for example, Robert Cay in Newcastle and William Stukeley in Lincolnshire, these letters show Horsley's preoccupations and anxieties in the years leading up to the publication of Britannia Romana, of his rivalry with the antiquary, Alexander Gordon, and of his widow’s efforts to tidy up his affairs after his sudden death.

Lawrence Keppie is Emeritus Professor of Roman History and Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. He retired as Professor of Roman History and Archaeology and Senior Curator of Archaeology, History and Ethnography at the Hunterian Museum in October 2003. He is a prolific author of books and papers on the Roman Army, such as The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire (Routledge 1998), as well as several monographs on Roman inscriptions. He has a keen interest in the people who have contributed to our understanding of our past, which has led to his book William Hunter and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, 1807–2007 (Edinburgh University Press 2007), and to his interest in John Horsley.

This lecture is also part of the Society’s Horsley Memorial Lectures.