During research into the reinterment in 1859 of John Hunter’s remains in Westminster Abbey, it was learnt that there was ‘a window to Hunter’s memory’ in St Mary Abbots church, Kensington, London. Research into that window shows that it in fact commemorates Hunter’s residence within the parish, and that also of two other Kensington worthies. Their place of residence is identified, Hunter’s is illustrated and a nice connexion is found with a window in Gloucester cathedral in memory of Drs Jenner and Baron.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereinafter ODNB), 28, pp. 898–906.
2.
ODNB, 8, p. 515.
3.
McHardyG. The reinterment of John Hunter's remains in Westminster Abbey and the memorial brass erected over his grave. J Med Biogr2018; 26: 251–258.
4.
Survey of London, XXXVIII Northern Kensington (1973), pp. 31–35; on Sir George Gilbert Scott, see ODNB, 49, pp. 371–377.
5.
Lancet, vol. II (21 August 1875), p. 291. No trace has been found either of the list of donors that ‘will be published in the course of the year' or of ‘a drawing of Hunter's house and grounds' that was to be ‘forwarded to each subscriber'.
6.
John Jones Merriman, of 45 Kensington Square, was a member but never a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. For an obituary notice, see Br Med J, 19 September 1896, p. 787.
7.
London: Royal College of Surgeons of England (hereinafter RCSEngl.) MS RCS-GOV/2/1/8, Council Minutes, pp. 55–56.
8.
ODNB, 19, pp. 392–393.
9.
ODNB, 58, pp. 72–74.
10.
That is, £10.50, one guinea being 21 shillings in pre-decimal currency.
11.
ODNB, 51, pp. 676–677.
12.
For John Birkett (1815–1904), see Plarr's Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
13.
RCSEngl. MS RCS-GOV/2/1/8, Council Minutes, pp. 55–56.
14.
RCSEngl. MS RCS-GOV/2/1/8, Council Minutes, pp. 61–62.
15.
St Mary Abbots Parish Magazine, May 1882, p. 138.
16.
‘The North Transept Window', in S. Mary Abbotts [sic] Parish Magazine, June 1877, the first of the unpaginated pages following p. 24. Both Scott, Judith D. Guillum, The Story of St Mary Abbots, Kensington (London: SPCK, 1942), p. 99, and Survey of London, XXXVII Northern Kensington (1973), p. 35, closely follow what is written in the parish magazine concerning the stained glass windows in the church. That Scott could find nothing more is telling: no one could be better placed than was she to know the sources for a history of St Mary Abbots church.
17.
ODNB, 35, pp. 447–449.
18.
Mention of Rysbrack, one of the two leading sculptors of the period 1720–1760, reminds one of the second, Roubiliac, probably the most accomplished sculptor ever to work in England, and his very remarkable standing figure of Newton of 1755 in the ante-chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, with its not dissimilar judgement of the man. Merriman wrote an article on Newton as one of the ‘Kensington Worthies' in St Mary Abbots Parish Magazine, 1889, pp. 225–226.
19.
S. Mary Abbotts [sic] Parish Magazine, June 1877, first unpaginated page following p. 24.
20.
‘Records of the Rebuilding of St Mary Abbots Church…, 1866–1881' in St Mary Abbots Parish Magazine, 1882, p. 65.
21.
The firm, which is said to have produced some 80,000 stained glass windows between 1856 and 1880, continued in business into the 1990s. The destruction of its records by bombing in the 1939–1945 War, before any real interest was shown in Victorian stained glass, has proved a great obstacle to research into Clayton and Bell and its glazing (and other) work.
22.
D Welander, The Stained Glass of Gloucester Cathedral (Gloucester: Welander and Priests of Cathedral, 1985), p. 85 and p. 84, respectively.
23.
McHardy, op. cit. ref. 3, p. 254, and p. 255, Figure 2.
24.
ODNB, 30, 4–8.
25.
ODNB, 4, 17–18.
26.
Survey of London, XXXVII Northern Kensington, ed. F.H.W. Sheppard (1973), p. 52.
27.
The letters KCT and KC given after his name are not understood. McGrigor, a Scotsman, was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1850, but certainly never a Knight of the Order of the Thistle, which pertains to Scotland and is in precedence second only to the Order of the Garter.
28.
Survey of London, XXXVII Northern Kensington, ed. F.H.W. Sheppard (1973), p. 70.
29.
Barkston Gardens lies east of Earls Court Road about 200 metres (or 3 minutes’ walk) south-east of Earls Court underground station.
30.
Survey of London, XLII Kensington Square to Earls Court, ed. Hermione Hobhouse (1986), p. 197. (No documentary evidence has so far been found to substantiate the interesting suggestion made there, incidentally, that Hunter’s architect might have been Robert Mylne (1733–1811), brother-in-law to Hunter’s wife, herself sister of Everard Home; for Mylne, see H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 4th edition (London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 720–727.) See also W. Moore, The Knife Man (London: Bantam Press, 2005), especially pp. 173–174, 176–177, and 211–213, and Stephen Pasmore, ‘John Hunter in Kensington' (Hunterian Oration, 1977) in Trans Hunterian Soc, vol. 35/36 (1976–1977), pp. 69–97; Hunter's menagerie is dealt with on pp. 76–80. Merriman wrote a book, John Hunter at Earls Court, Kensington 1764–1793 (London: Wakeham and Son, 1886), as well as an article on Hunter as one of the ‘Kensington Worthies', in St Mary Abbots Parish Magazine, 1890, pp. 40–47.
