John Robert Mortimer (15^th June 1825 – 19 August 1911)

A short note by Rodger Connell

 I attach a list of publications, some easily obtained, that document Mortimer’s working life (grain, seed and manure merchant based in Driffield) and his lifelong interest in archaeology, particularly his excavation of over 400 prehistoric  and Anglo-Saxon burial mounds on the Yorkshire Wolds, some close to his birth village of Fimber, south west of Sledmere. The Wikipedia reference below is well worth looking up as it contains a photograph of him, a photograph of his purpose-built archaeology and geology museum in Lockwood Street, Driffield (built it 1878, now the Masonic Hall) and one of the Mortimer cases in the current Hull and East Riding Museum in Hull containing some of the prehistoric artifacts he excavated.

Fig. 1. The blue plaque on the Masonic Hall, Driffield. Formerly Mortimer’s Museum of Archaeology and Geology. Photograph by Rodger Connell

 Mortimer’s 1905 book documents his careful excavation of the burial mounds on the Wolds and has many beautilful drawings of the artifacts recovered by his daughter Agnes Mortimer.

 Mortimer also had an interest in the geology of the Wolds and the chalk valleys. In his 1887 paper he records the chalk gravels deposited by cold climate periglacial processes on the west side of the valley at Danes Dyke on Flamborough Head. Interestingly this is one of the sites recently studied in detail by the Society’s Flamborough Quaternary Research Group, instigated by Mike Horne and Ian Heppenstall. Paul Hildreth’s recent paper (2020) on the Chalk Group in northern England also contains a photograph of Mortimer with a brief discussion of his work.

 Fig. 2. The periglacial chalk gravel noted by Mortimer. West side of Danes Dyke. The right dipping gravels above and to the left of Mike Horne. The chalk gravels overlie tectonised Chalk bedrock. Photo taken in 2009.

Acknowledgement:

 Many thanks to Paul Hildreth for his comments on an earlier draft.

References:

Anon. 2021 (accessed 2022). John Robert Mortimer. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robert_Mortimer >

Harrison S 2011. John Robert Mortimer. The life of a nineteenth century East Yorkshire archaeologist. Blackthorn Press, Pickering. 465 pp.

Hicks J D (editor) 1978 (reprinted 1987). A Victorian boyhood on the Wolds. The recollections of J R Mortimer. East Yorkshire Local History Society, Beverley. 34 pp.

Hildreth P N 2020. The Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society and its contribution to the study of the Chalk Group of northern England. Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society 63, 147–161.

Mortimer J R 1887. A description of the origin and distribution of the un-water-worn chalk-gravels on the Yorkshire Chalk Hills, supplemented by an account of neighbouring and somewhat contemporaneous deposits. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 8, 287–298.

Mortimer J R 1905. Forty Years’ Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire. A Brown and Sons, London. (Reprinted 2018. Classic Reprint Series, Forgotten Books, London). 452 pp.

copyright Hull Geological Society 2022