Hodgson, John [pseud. Archaeus] (1779-1845), antiquary, son of Isaac Hodgson, stonemason and slater, and Elizabeth (bap. 1755), daughter of William Rawes, was born at Swindale, in the parish of Shap, Westmorland, on 4 November 1779. He studied at Bampton grammar school from the age of seven to nineteen. As his parents were too poor to make a university education possible, from the age of twenty he had to earn his own livelihood, first as the master of the village school at Matterdale, near Ullswater, then at Stainton, near Penrith. Early in 1801 he was appointed to the school of Sedgefield, co. Durham. The rector of Sedgefield, George Barrington, a nephew of the bishop of Durham, and his curates showed much kindness to Hodgson, and helped him by the loan of books. He was offered an appointment as director of Lemmington ironworks near Newcastle, with a salary of £300 a year; but he refused this tempting offer on the ground that he wished ‘to pursue a literary rather than a mercantile life’. In 1802 he failed in an examination for holy orders, which disappointment, combined with ill health, led him to leave Sedgefield in 1803 for the mastership of the school at Lanchester, near Durham. There in 1804 he succeeded in passing his ordination examination, and became curate of the chapelries of Esh and Satley, two hamlets in the parish of Lanchester, where he still kept his school.
The vestiges of a fine Roman camp at Lanchester attracted Hodgson's attention, and led him to study Roman antiquities. In 1807 he published a little volume, Poems Written at Lanchester, including ‘Langovicum, a Vision’, a poetical account of the Roman camp. In 1806 he left Lanchester for the curacy of Gateshead, then in 1808 he was presented by the patron, Cuthbert Ellison, with the living of Jarrow-with-Heworth. The income barely amounted to £100 a year, but it was very congenial to a man of Hodgson's tastes to serve the church where Bede had been a monk. On 11 January 1810 he married Jane Bridget (1786–1853), daughter of Richard Kell, a local stone merchant, and in the same year was commissioned to write the account of Northumberland for Brayley and Britton's Beauties of England and Wales. This gave him an opportunity for exploring the county, where he made many friends. The following year he did the same for Westmorland. Of this series Hodgson's volumes were widely regarded as the best. In 1812 he rewrote for a Newcastle publisher The Picture of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a guidebook to the town, incorporating much research about the Roman wall and the early history of the coal trade. That May a colliery explosion at the Felling pit in Hodgson's parish caused the death of ninety-two people. Hodgson appealed for help for the widows and orphans, and published his funeral sermon, to which he prefixed an account of the accident. This book, An Account of the Explosion at Felling (1813), is valuable for its accurate account of the colliery, accompanied by a plan of the workings, and is one of the very few trustworthy records of the old system of coalmining. For the next few years Hodgson was employed in making experiments and attending meetings of the Society for the Prevention of Accidents in Coal Mines. In 1815 he visited the Dudley coalfield, to examine means of preventing colliery accidents, and later that year Sir Humphry Davy met Hodgson on his visit to Newcastle, so beginning an acquaintance acknowledged as enabling him to complete his invention of the safety lamp (‘New researches on flame’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1817). Meanwhile Hodgson was instrumental in the foundation of a society of antiquaries in Newcastle, which came into existence in 1813, and served with John Adamson as co-secretary (1813–34). The first three volumes of the society's Transactions contain many papers by him.
In 1817 Hodgson began work on his History of Northumberland. In 1819 he visited London to work in the various archive repositories, and on his return announced his book to appear in six volumes, published by subscription, limited to 300 copies. The first to appear, in 1820, was the fifth volume, which contained records and papers relating to border history. In 1821 Hodgson again visited London, with an expedition to Oxford for the purposes of his researches. He was also engaged in raising money for a new church at Heworth, which he designed himself. This simple building did much to revive a taste for ecclesiastical architecture in the north of England. It was consecrated in May 1822.
In 1823 Bishop Barrington presented Hodgson to the vicarage of Kirkwhelpington, a country parish in the centre of Northumberland. His obligations in regard to the new church at Heworth, which was not yet paid for, made it desirable that he should continue to hold the living of Jarrow until the parish of Heworth had been separated from it. This he continued to do until 1833, appointing two curates, and had many financial troubles in consequence. Two gentleman antiquarians, Sir John Edward Swinburne of Capheaton and Walter C. Trevelyan of Wallington, resident near Kirkwhelpington, gave him much help and encouragement. It was not until 1827 that he was able to publish the first volume of his parochial history of Northumberland, dealing with Redesdale, largely helped by a subscription of £200 from Bishop Barrington. In 1828 the sixth volume was published, containing fresh documents and records, and in 1832 followed the second volume of the parochial history. But in spite of its remarkable thoroughness the book met with little immediate success, and Hodgson suffered considerable loss on each volume. His health was failing, and the loss of three children gave Kirkwhelpington melancholy associations. In 1833 he was appointed to the vicarage of the neighbouring parish of Hartburn, where he enjoyed a larger income. This enabled him in 1835 to publish an extra volume of his history, containing the pipe rolls for Northumberland. In 1839 the third volume of the parochial history appeared, containing an account of the Roman wall; in it Hodgson first clearly established the claim of Hadrian to be considered as its builder. His health, however, gave way while this volume was passing through the press, and he was unable to carry his work any further. After much suffering from many infirmities, including a stroke, he died at Hartburn vicarage on 12 June 1845, and was buried in Hartburn churchyard on 17 June.
Besides the works already mentioned Hodgson contributed papers to the Gentleman's Magazine from 1821 onwards, under the pseudonym Archaeus. His great work, however, was his History of Northumberland, which for excellence of design and completeness of execution is still a model of what a county history might be. The 100 volumes of manuscript collectanea for the completion of his work are now preserved in the Northumberland Record Office. Because of the thoroughness of his research for the date of publication, Hodgson's History has effectively prevented publication of a comprehensive modern history of the county. The History of the County of Northumberland in fifteen volumes, published between 1893 and 1940, covers areas omitted from his work. Raine, his biographer, recalled Hodgson as ‘thin and spare, of a thoughtful countenance and a composed garb’, but blessed with a ‘singularly captivating’ smile.
MANDELL CREIGHTON, rev. C. M. FRASER
Sources
J. Raine, A memoir of the Rev. John Hodgson (1857) · C. M. Fraser, ‘John Hodgson: county historian’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th ser., 24 (1996), 171–85 · personal information (1891)
