One of the aims of the Northumberland Archives Charitable Trust is to improve and promote access to documents held within Northumberland Archives. Projects have been funded to list collections as well as adding descriptive content to existing collections. This additional information is added to our catalogue making the content available and searchable via the Online Catalogue on the Northumberland Archives website either at home or in the search rooms. The current cataloguing project focuses on a collection of deeds relating to lands owned by members of the Clayton family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
John Clayton, Town Clerk and namesake of Newcastle’s Clayton Street, was an instrumental part of how we see Hadrian’s Wall today. The obituary read by his long-term friend and fellow Wall enthusiast and author Rev. J. Collingwood Bruce at a meeting of The Society of Antiquaries Newcastle upon Tyne (SANT) sums up many of his achievements as well as providing some more personal anecdotes. It appears in the Society’s publication ‘Archaeologia Aeliana’.
Clayton’s first published article for SANT was published in 1844 and it was an account of the excavation of chambers near the station of Cilurnum (Chesters Roman Fort). A later article covered the excavation at the mile-castle at Cawfields which was held in high esteem by Bruce. It was Clayton’s work that showed that the gateways opened north, “showing that [the Wall] was not a mere fence to exclude the Caledonians, but was a line of military works for the better managing their assaults upon them”. An excavation at the mile-castle at Housesteads lead to enlightening information, it was during this dig that “fragments of the inscriptions [were found] bearing the names of Hadrian and his legate Aulus Platorius Nepos – inscriptions which bear strongly upon the question, ‘Who was the builder of the Wall?’”. Clayton wrote many articles for SANT’s ‘Archaeologia Aeliana’ between 1843 and 1889, mostly about archaeology and descriptions of his excavations.
Reading the obituary, it is clear that Clayton and Bruce have been lifelong friends, he specifically states that he is not going to detail Clayton’s many other non-archaeological achievements. We learn that at school, Clayton enjoyed reading the Classics and gave up his play time to continue reading, he later tutored his sister when she wished to learn Latin. He enjoyed fishing but not shooting. The one occasion he did actually shoot a bird Clayton then realised that he did not have the appropriate license and hurried to buy one the following day, realising that it would not look good if the Town Clerk of Newcastle was found to be shooting without the correct paperwork!
John Clayton’s obituary in ‘Archaeologia Aeliana’, 2nd series, Volume 15, 1892, pp90-95, and ‘The Handbook to the Roman Wall’ by [Rev.] J. Collingwood Bruce are both available at Northumberland Archive’s Woodhorn site. The documents and deeds relating to the Clayton family that have been the subject of the Northumberland Archives Charitable Trust’s funded listing project can be found on the electronic catalogue using Ref.No ZCY* and are also available to view at the Woodhorn search room.
On completion of the initial papers another smaller collection was listed relating specifically to a property called Lincoln Hill on the Chesters Estate owned by John Clayton. The documents date from 1689 to 1955 and provide details of the owners of the property and land prior to the Clayton family connection, Ref. No NRO 12643.
The Clayton cataloguing project has now come to an end. Details of the next project will be available soon!