Petrie

Petrie, GEORGE, a learned Irish archaeologist, was born at Dublin in January 1790, son of a portrait-painter from Aberdeen. He studied art, and became famous for his Irish landscapes, but gave from the beginning the half of his heart to his favourite study. In 1828 he was set over the short-lived antiquarian and historical section of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and in 1832 he became editor of the Dublin Penny Journal. He was made LL.D. by Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, received a Civil List pension of £300 in 1849, and died January 17, 1866. Petrie's admirable Essay on Round Towers received the Irish Academy's prize in 1830. It remains a work of the very greatest value. All antiquaries accept its theory that the round towers were Christian ecclesiastical buildings of various date. Other writings are an Essay on the Military Architecture of Ireland and History and Antiquities of Tara Hall. See the study by William Stokes (1868).