Britton

Britton, JOHN, topographer and antiquary, the son of a small farmer and village shopkeeper, was born in 1771, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, and, losing his parents young, received but a scanty education. At sixteen he went to London, and was in turn cellarman, clerk, and compiler of a song-book. Some contributions to a dramatic miscellany led the publisher to employ him, with a young friend, Brayley, to compile the Beauties of Wiltshire; its success led up to the Beauties of England and Wales, on behalf of which the joint authors travelled 3500 miles to inspect the localities described, and which cost £50,000. They also prepared the Beauties of Bedfordshire in the same manner. Britton afterwards issued a more elaborate work, entitled the Architectural Antiquities of England. He died in London, January 1, 1857. One of the most important of his publications was The Cathedral Antiquities of England (14 vols. folio and 4to, 1814-35, with upwards of 300 highly finished plates). Altogether, his illustrated works number eighty-seven, besides others of a similar kind which he edited. Britton was amongst the first to combine and popularise antiquarian and topographical description, and by his letter to Joseph Hume in 1840 on the preservation of ancient monuments, he anticipated the Act of 1882. See his Autobiography (1850).