William Stukeley, (1687-1765)
William Stukeley was the English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work.
The son of a Holbeach lawyer, after taking his MB degree at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Stukeley went to London and studied medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital.
In 1710, he started in practice in Boston and became a member of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society (founded by his friend Maurice Johnson II), before returning in 1717 to London.
In the same year, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and, in 1718, joined in the establishment of the Society of Antiquaries, acting for nine years as its secretary.
In 1719 Stukeley took his MD degree, and in 1720 became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, publishing in the same year his first contribution to antiquarian literature.
A keen freemason, he moved to Castlegate, Grantham, in 1726 to practice medicines and immediately set up a lodge.
He also began to describe himself as a “druid”, and incorrectly believed that the prehistoric megalithic monuments were a part of the druidic religion. However, despite this he has been noted as being a significant figure in the early development of the modern movement known as Neo-druidry.
He also befriended Isaac Newton and became one of his first biographers.
He left town to become vicar of All Saints’ Church, Stamford, between 1730 and 1747.
Stukeley’s work on Stonehenge was one of the first to attempt to date the monument.
Working with astronomer Edmund Halley, he proposed that the builders of Stonehenge knew about magnetism, and had aligned the monument with magnetic north. Stukeley used some incomplete data about the variation of the North Magnetic Pole; he extrapolated that it oscillated in a regular pattern.
Today it is known that the North Magnetic Pole wanders in an irregular fashion.
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