Press Release
20th April 2015
The launch of Dr David Wright’s new biography of the Georgian
archaeologist, antiquary and genealogist, and sometime vicar of Monks
Horton, the Rev’d Bryan Faussett of Heppington House, Nackington
Bryan Faussett: Antiquary Extraordinary
7 – 9 pm, Wednesday 13 May
at the Alexander Centre, Preston St, Faversham
Signed copies will be available.
*****
Dr David Wright was born in Whitstable, where he still lives and works as a genealogist,
historian and researcher.
Eight years ago he went to the Society of Antiquaries’ 300th Anniversary Exhibition at
Burlington House in Piccadilly where he saw a display of Anglo-Saxon jewelled brooches
belonging to the Bryan Faussett collection. Pride of place was given to the famous
Kingston Brooch, the largest of the seventh-century gold-and-garnet brooches ever
discovered in Britain. Looking as he was for the subject of a full-length biography, this
presented the perfect opportunity.
Bryan Faussett lived at Heppington House, Nackington, just south of Canterbury, in a
splendid Georgian mansion. In his digging career he excavated 777 Anglo-Saxon barrow
graves around East Kent, and was the first archaeologist to record meticulously every
grave he found and the contents of them.
After his death in 1776, these nationally important collections were offered to The British
Museum who rejected them simply because a department for British antiquities did not
exist at that time.
The book is not just for academics, for the story of Bryan Faussett is a very human one,
describing his foibles, worries about money, and love of litigation. His love of recording
means that household accounts throw much light upon the costs and values of property
and everyday articles in east Kent in the 1750s and 1760s.
- ENDS For more information: www.bryanfaussett.co.uk/press-release.html
Contact: Neil Anthony - E: spectralmirror@gmail.com T: 01843 309114, M: 0770 3347701