Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Institute, ‘with a view and in the hope
of rendering it more popular, and consequently more useful’. 214 Archaeology had indeed
overtaken topography in the popular mind as a way of looking at the landscape of the
past, but Britton, in ill-health and nearing the end of his life, was too late to catch this
particular bandwagon, it had rolled beyond his reach.
The mid century did not see the end of the antiquarian endeavour in architecture
or elsewhere. 215 The Wiltshire Archaeological Society still exists as does the Society of
Antiquaries, which awoke from its slumbers later in the century although its prominence
has been more notable in the field of archaeology (as understood in the modern sense)
than in architectural history. Both the British Archaeological Association and the
Archaeological Institute also survive; the latter, significantly, is now Royal under the
patronage of Her Majesty the Queen. Both hold their lectures in the rooms of the Society
of Antiquaries. Antiquarianism per se, however, was never again so closely involved with
architectural history and its fate on this front was indicative.
214
Britton, An Address from John Britton, p.1.
215
See Buchanan, ‘Robert Willis and the Rise of Architectural History’, p.377, for varying views on the
status of antiquarianism in the later nineteenth century.
98