Thomas Alcock Beck
Born(1795-05-31)31 May 1795
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England
Died26 April 1846(1846-04-26) (aged 50)[1]
Esthwaite Lodge, Hawkshead,[2] England
NationalityEnglish
OccupationAuthor
Known forAuthor of Annales Furnesienses

Thomas Alcock Beck (1795–1846) was an English author known for writing Annales Furnesienses (1844), a history of Furness Abbey, which was dedicated by permission to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and which contained twenty-six steel engravings and several woodcuts.[2] Beck was a long-term resident of Hawkshead in Lancashire, where his parents had lived at The Grove. He used a wheelchair for much of his life, being unable to walk due to a spinal complaint. At one time he had attended Hawkshead Grammar School and he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814, but left without taking a degree.

Around 1819, he commenced the building of his regency mansion Esthwaite Lodge (subsequently a youth hostel), to the design of George Webster. The grounds were specially laid out with easy gradients for his wheelchair.[3] Besides other antiquarian interests, he also edited Dr. William Close's unfinished work An Itinerary of Furness.

Marriage

On 25 April 1838 he married Elizabeth Fell of Hawkshead[4] (formerly of Ulverston), having obtained a special license to allow the ceremony to take place within his own home.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "Hawkshead Benefice" (PDF).
  2. 1 2 "Images of Cumbria - Hawkshead Parish".
  3. ↑ Thomas Alcock Beck: article in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition available by subscription, retrieved 4 December 2013
  4. ↑ "Lancashire OnLine Parish Clerk Project".
  5. ↑ Original Hawkshead parish register, deposited with Cumbria Archive Service, Kendal.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.