The Brockhurst Observatory

The Brockhurst Observatory

The Brockhurst Observatory

Richard Pearson 90000

9 781326 018405

Richard Pearson

ISBN 978-1-326-01840-5

The Brockhurst Observatory

The Brockhurst Observatory The history of the Brockhurst Observatory in East Grinstead Including the biographies of William Sadler Franks F.R.A.S. Sir Patrick Moore, OBE, D.SC. (Hon.), F.R.A.S. John Russell Hind. F.R.A.S.

Richard Pearson With contributions from Sir Patrick Moore, Jeremy Shears & Martin Mobberley

Astronomy & Space 2014

Copyright Š 2014 Richard Pearson.

Copyright Š 2014 Jeremy Shears All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-326-01840-5 First Printing: 1996, 2012, revised 2014.

Astronomy & Space Bellevue Court Nottingham. NG3 3NA. https://vimeo.com/channels/astronomyspacetv

Table of contents Acknowledgements ...............................................................xi Foreword .............................................................................. xi List of illustrations............

Chapter 1: Thomas William Bush ...........................................1 Chapter 2: William Sadler Franks .........................................34 Chapter 3: The Brockhurst Observatory ...............................62 Chapter 4: Patrick Moore 1923 - 2012. ................................ 71 Appendix 1 | John Russell Hind .............................................88 Appendix 2 | comet observed by Thomas William Bush 98

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Jeremy Shears FRAS. For his research paper into William Sadler Franks, and including me in his acknowledgements. Staff at Nottingham Local Studies library, in particular Cat Smith (1998) who helped locate maps, illustrations, and looked up Thomas Bush's family records; and Dr Alan Chapman for his valuable assistance and support, and allowing me to make a contribution to his best selling academic book 'The Victorian Amateur Astronomer ( published by Praxis).

Forward When I first researched this work, I was studying the biography of Thomas William Bush FRAS who I had come across by accident. I was actually researching old St Ann's, Nottingham, where I live, and came across the site of an astronomical observatory in Mapperley Park, and I was intrigued as to whom in belonged to. This led me to Nottingham astronomer Thomas Bush. In researching the life of Bush, I spoke to Sir Patrick Moore on a number of occasions, and then William Sadler Franks' entered the picture, followed soon after by the Brockhurst Observatory in East Grinstead.

I gave an illustrated talk to the Antique Telescope Society in Bath, UK, which is an American organization, and soon after historian Dr. Alan Chapman of Wadham College, Oxford, asked to use all of my research notes in chapter 10 of his academic work: The Victorian Amateur Astronomer.

In 2013, Jeremy Shears contacted me. FRAS who was researching the biography of W.S. Franks for a historic paper to be published by the BAA Luna section, and I made available my notes and images. I am pleased to say that I have included Jeremy's research in the chapters of this book to help bring it as historically up to date as possible.

I would like to acknowledge the valuable help of Cat Smith who formerly worked at Nottingham Local Studies Library, who provided me with a lot of assistance, without whose help this book would not have been possible. Jeremy Shears FRAS, Sir Patrick Moore, & Dr. Alan Chapman.

This historic work is now right up to date, and I trust it will aid future generations who wish to learn something about The Brockhurst Observatory, and some of the astronomers who placed Sir Patrick Moore on the path of Astronomy.

Richard Pearson October

1. ASTRONOMER THOMAS WILLIAM BUSH THE BAKER OF NOTTINGHAM

Bush was born in Nottingham on 19 May 1839, son of John Bush (1802-1847) and Mary Neep (1807- 1870?). John Bush was a dyer by profession and lived at 4 Canal Street in the town. Upon his death in 1847 Mary went on to marry 43-year-old John Marriott on 6 August 1848 who became Thomas’s stepfather. Thomas Bush was generally self taught, though he owed a great deal to the Headmaster of the Wesleyan Methodist School, the Rev George Roebuck, who was a keen amateur astronomer. Bush was also educated at the Standard Hill Academy located near Nottingham Castle that taught many subjects, including Astronomy.

Neville Hoskins of the Nottingham Thoroton Society in a review of The Nottinghamshire History Lecture by Dr Paul Elliott – ‘British Enlightenment Culture in a Regional Centre’: Scientific Personalities, Ideas & Institutions in Nottingham c1700-1840’ that took place on 13 November 2004, recorded:“In Nottingham many societies met in establishments such as the Nottingham Mechanics Institute and Nottingham Subscription Library, which also had their own special interest groups. The 18th and early 19th century saw a growing interest in scientific and technical advances, and was the heyday of itinerant public lecturers who thought nothing of transporting sheep's heads, working models of cranes and demonstrations of astronomical discoveries.

“Some of these lecturers began by running private educational establishments: Charles Wilkinson, who’s Nottingham Academy, founded 1777, occupied land between what is now Parliament Street and Foreman Street. In that year Robert Goodacre was born, who, aged 20 started a day school, also in Parliament Street, which later moved and became the Standard Hill Academy shown here.

Goodacre was particularly interested in astronomy, and was a prime example of the itinerant lecturer; in London, Yorkshire, Scotland, the Channel Islands and a 4-year tour of America; the logistics of this in the 1820s gives food for thought.” Mr. Goodacre died in 1835, aged 58 years.

Bush’s new stepfather, 46-year-old John Marriott was a baker and flour seller by trade who originally lived in Mill Street off Derby Road, before moving to the Canal Street premises. The business then changed from being Dyers to a Bakers shop where John was able to employ one man to run his small shop selling flour, bread, and buns.

The distinct smell of freshly baked bread early each morning was Mr. Marriott's trademark, which helped to sell most of what he baked.

In addition, there were twelve other traders with the Christian name of Marriott; so that there is no doubt that the Marriott’s were wealthy business people living in Nottingham around 1840. William Marriott for example, was a victualler and kept the Royal Arch Druid in Lister gate. Listed on page 193 in the 'Post office Directory' of Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire (1855).

On the other hand, there were a great many people with the Christian name of Bush, the majority being in the dyers trade.

Thomas Bush proved to have a good learning ability and to have a marvelous power of retaining what he was taught, which he used to his own advantage. Thomas Bush was able to obtain his schooling free by teaching the rest of the Scholars geography, while he himself became proficient in mathematics and optics, before going on to learn his stepfather’s baking trade.

He also devoted much of his attention to linguistic studies, including German, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. However, it was optics and astronomy that interested him the most, although due to the industrial revolution the smoke and smog in the Nottingham air greatly hampered any observing he could do, for this reason he concentrated on building Newtonian telescopes.

Work began when he was in his early twenties after joining the Nottingham Mechanics Institute, an educational establishment that preceded the setting up of Nottingham College University in Shakespeare Street. He joined the Institute in 1861, and was immediately rewarded by sitting in on two astronomical lectures by Mr. W.R. Brit FRAS. On 15 January the talk was entitled 'A Night among the Stars.' 48 hours later, he sat and enjoyed 'A Night with the Moon.' It is interesting to note that during his long membership history, his relative Samuel Bush joined him there in 1863.

Astronomical lectures at Nottingham Mechanics Institute continued until February 1887, the most notable were: 2

• • • • •

January 14, 1873 the Wonders of the Heavens. Benjamin J. Malden.

January 19, 1874, The Aurora and star showers. J.H. Freeman.

October 03, 1880 the birth of the Solar System. R.A. Proctor.

November 17, 1882 an evening with the stars and the transit of Venus.

Benjamin J. Malden. January 28, 1887 the Moon. Sir Robert S Ball.

It was during this ten-year period that Thomas Bush married his wife Martha Cecilia Johnston on 24 August 1863 in St Mary’s church that was two years younger than he was. By profession, she was a teacher of music born at Harrington, Lancashire, in 1850. On the marriage certificate, the farther of the bride is given as Mr. Henry Johnson (deceased), who was also a musician.

They both lived together at 4 Canal Street until (possibly) his mother (Mary Neep) died some time in 1870. Thomas and his wife Martha then moved into his own baker & grocery shop at 102 Canal Street (Shown here), situated opposite Narrow and Upper Marsh, two of Nottingham's most over crowded slum areas.

Sadly, his new home was also located on a poor site in the heart of Nottingham, so he was unable to make any useful astronomical observations. On one side stood, a large Lace factory, the Nottingham canal and wharfs were still at the rear, while rats infested and dusty sawmill stood on the site.

The rear of 102 Canal Street is shown in this early photograph of the site.

The Newtonian is a type of reflecting telescope invented by the British scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in 1671. It consists of a parabolic mirror at the bottom of the telescope tube that focuses the starlight onto another flat mirror near the top. The secondary flat mirror is angled at precisely 45°, so that the starlight then enters the eyepiece and the astronomer's eye where it is seen magnified.

In Thomas Bush's time, the primary mirror was made of speculum, an alloy of Copper and Tin, which was highly polished upon pitch using rouge and water. His first experiments in making speculum mirrors were tiresome. The property of speculum was of extreme hardness, although unusually brittle, so that great care had to be employed while grinding it to the correct curvature without any noticeable flaws.

In the end, Thomas Bush turned to the then new technique of using glass for the primary mirror, and became one of the first pioneers of glass mirror making.

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The 13-inch mirror made by Bush for his first telescope weighed over 20 lb. and therefore needed to be mounted securely in the bottom of the tube, and for this, he settled on using a thick iron plate. He also employed a prism silver coated on one of its facets for the secondary flat.

After many months of hard work, as well as sleepless nights, the telescope was complete and was a masterpiece of perfection.

Thomas Bush then had his chance to show it to the rest of the world when he learned of the Working Men's International Exhibition being held in Islington at the Agricultural Hall, North London, in July 1870.

At the exhibition, his telescope was number 37, and was put on public display in section twelve for Scientific Apparatus.

Bush was now 30 years old and his telescope was soon singled out for praise. On 19 July 1870. One Mr. S. Alex. Renshaw wrote to the editor of the Nottingham Journal to claim his personal acquaintance with the town's sudden celebrity, and report upon how Bush had none about his optical work. Renshaw clearly knew something about telescopes, and discussed the problems of casting metal specula and figuring them into a proper parabolic curve.

However, another account of its construction appeared in The Times newspaper on 12 July 1870 that reads: "It has a speculum 13 inches in diameter, is equatorially mounted, and presents several novel features of construction that are claimed as improvements.

"Mr. Bush is a self taught astronomer, mathematician and mechanic.

He has made, without assistance, the whole of the calculations necessary for the construction of the instrument, and has constructed models for all of its parts. Some of these, such as the main cast iron column of support, as well as certain portions of the tube, were too bulky for his tools and were manufactured to his order.

His prism was obtained from Stenholm, of Munich. However, with these exceptions, the whole of the telescope was his own work.

"It is pleasing to add that this monument of industry, and perseverance, has fulfilled the expectations of its maker.

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"The speculum has been tested by Purvis’s process, as a consequence it proved correct, and the telescope has been found to divide satisfactorily such double stars as Eta-Coronæ, Zeta-Böötes, and Zeta-Hercules.

"Its performance on the Moon and nebula has also been very fine; it has been used with a magnifying power of 1,400...

"Queen Victoria's special attention was directed to the telescope as one of the most remarkable features of the exhibition, she later presented Mr. Bush with a gold medal as a mark of appreciation.”

A few days later, Mr. Milward, the agent of the Nottingham exhibitors, was explaining the working of the telescope to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and placed it in various positions for observation. The Prime Minister thanked him for his attention, and made a memorandum of Thomas Bush's Nottingham address. As William Ewart Gladstone (1809 – 1898), shown here on the right, left the exhibition that day he had already decided to write to the Astronomer Royal about this remarkable telescope made by a humble Nottingham Baker and Grocer.

The Prime Minister had the view of presenting Bush with a scientific instrument as a mark of appreciation. In the event, unknown to the Prime Minister, the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Biddle Airy (18011891), had a Nottingham connection.

Not only had he met Lord Forester while they were educated together at Trinity College Cambridge, who would later befriend Bush; he had previously appointed John Russell Hind, an excellent self-taught astronomer, to work for him.

The Astronomer Royal, shown here on the left, wished to give as much encouragement to Thomas Bush's astronomical work as he could. He therefore sent to his home a spectrometer by Browning, a solar eyepiece and a Filer micrometer. This then was a proud moment in his life, and Thomas Bush made full use of the instruments, and wore the medal on many special occasions.

Since the discovery made by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in 1665 that sunlight passed through a narrow slit, and then a triangular glass prism, was separated into a spectrum of colors, the 'Spectroscope' soon followed. It was refined by a number of astronomers to study 5

starlight, one of the pioneers being Joseph von Fraunhofer (17871826) in Germany in 1814.

However, regular spectroscopic observations of bright stars at the Greenwich Observatory only began in 1874, after a period of experiments by Sir George Airy himself, so that the Spectroscope' presented to Thomas Bush was the most modern scientific instrument of its time.

Thomas Bush had now proved himself to be a remarkable Nottingham ambassador, by showing that the best of British genius and manufacturing of precision industrial components could be found in many Nottingham factories of the town situated in the heart of the Midlands. His name solar eyepiece and news reports of the 13-inch telescope had not only appeared in the local press: the Nottingham Daily Guardian, 13 July 1870, and the Nottingham Journal, 20 July.

He made national headlines as well. The Times, 12 July, the Daily Telegraph, 13 July and the Counties Daily Express, 27 July.

In Nottingham Bush had become a prominent figure and public official. He soon set to work designing bigger telescopes, and began to consider moving away from the smoke and smog's of Canal Street out into the countryside.

On 9 November 1873, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS), and towards the end of the year became the secretary of Nottingham General Hospital and started work at an office in Postern Street.

Nottingham General Hospital was founded as a charitable institution by public subscription in 1782. One of the major benefactors was John Key, a Nottingham banker who left a legacy of £500 in 1778 for the building of a County Hospital.

His bequest was conditional on a further £1,000 in subscriptions being raised within five years. The Duke of Newcastle and the Nottingham Corporation each gave an acre of land and the cost of the building on Derry Hill, designed by the architect, John Simpson, was almost £5,000. Other prominent subscribers were Richard Arkwright, Sir Henry Cavendish and Peter Nightingale, great uncle of Florence. The formal opening of the building in September 1782 was a major event in Nottingham.

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The hospital opened with 44 beds and a small staff. Almost immediately, further beds had to be found and the Derbyshire wing was opened in 1787. Many extensions and additions followed including a third storey built onto the original building (1855), a new wing, located on the Park Row frontage (1879) and the Jubilee Wing (opened 1900), which comprised circular wards. The Cedars, a large house off Mansfield Road donated by Sir Charles Seely in 1897, provided 20 beds for convalescing patients.

Now financially secure, Bush drew up plans for his own 2-floor, 3bedroom cottage along with a large observatory situated on high ground in the prestige housing development of Alexandra Park, in Nottingham’s aristocratic district of Mapperley. However, I have been unable uncover any further references for his wife Martha.

On 23 August 1853, Nottingham Architect Mr. Thomas Chambers Hine (1813-1899), and his brother John, purchased the Mapperley Hills Common that covered twenty-seven acres.

Almost immediately, John bought his brother's rights to the land and acquired additional acres. Thomas Hine designed the grand layout of Alexandra Park, although due to financial difficulties during 1888 in the country as a whole it was never fully developed.

By this time, Orlando Watkin Weld (18 April 1813 - 22 June 1894), the 4th Lord Forester of Willey Park & lodge in Shropshire, had been the Rector of Gedling parish church, Nottingham, for seven years from 1867. Orlando was also a keen amateur astronomer, and in 1872, to the dismay of church elders, he completely replaced the medieval roof timbers of the Chancel, and painted astronomical motifs on each of the new thirty-six roof segments. Unfortunately, these can no longer be seen today.

The church records show that nine members of the Bush household originating from Carlton were buried at Gedling, four of which were children. On looking through the available electoral registers, 21year-old Elisa Bush, a farm worker born at Whitechurch, was the only family member I found living in Carlton around the year 1851.

17-4-1828 Jessica Bush, infant.

01-7-1829 Ann Bush, 86 years.

6-12-1840 John Bush, 4 years.

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20-3-1842 Richard Bush, 32 years.

29-6-1843 John Bush, 42 years.

25-7-1850 Ann Bush, 2 years.

18-3-1856 John Bush, Infant.

30-3-1857 Jessica Bush, Infant.

23-3-1861 William Bush, 26 years.

Lord Forester's first wife, Sofia Elizabeth, died on 2 April 1872, aged 70, and was buried at Gedling. Lord Forester then went on to become Canon and Chancellor of York Minster in 1874. He married his second wife, Emma Maria, on 5 October 1875.

As 1876 began, Thomas Bush decided on his observatory site high on a natural land formation at Thyra Grove, Mapperley, overlooking the Saint Ann's valley.

In Bush's time, Thyra Grove was a fine orchard with apple blossom trees and a large open field. The site had two advantages for Bush. It was situated outside the town centre away from the smoke and smog filled atmosphere that had troubled him for many years. Secondly, street lighting in 1876 was in its infancy. Town gas lighting was first used in Nottingham in the spring of 1819; moreover, it was another 90 years before the invention of the electric light bulb and the general introduction of gas mantles. Bush was therefore virtually guaranteed clear dark skies, his only problem being with the British weather.

His mind made up, Thomas Bush arranged to buy a plot of land at Thyra Grove from John Hine, and then with his building plans already prepared, he applied to Nottingham Town Borough Council for planning permission, on 3 May 1876.

He received consent soon afterwards and the builders began their work straight away. By Christmas, the two-story cottage was complete, and work had started on the new observatory that was a large building by any standards.

The building consisted of an equatorial room that housed his 13-inch telescope, and a computing room attached to the rear of the building.

The Mapperley Observatory, as it became known, was completed in the spring of 1877 when it came to general use.

In order to pay for the project, Thomas Bush sold his baker and grocery business in Canal street, although he remained Secretary of 8

Nottingham General Hospital. The Wright's & Kelly's trade directories gave his home address simply as 'The Observatory,' Mapperley, while the electoral register shows that Thomas Bush was resident at Thyra Grove between 1876-1888.

ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS In brief, a comet is a huge ball of rock and ice, with other chemical components, usually over five miles in diameter, which generally orbits around the Sun in an elliptical path. As it passes close to the Sun, the heat melts the ice, which gives off vaporous filaments, which flow out and away from the nucleus, causing a long tail to appear.

Some comets are only visible in large telescopes, while others like Halley's comet may be bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, as with comet 1881 IV Schaeberle.

The Australian astronomer John Tebbutt discovered his second great comet in the constellation of Columba the dove on the evening of 22 May 1881. "Immediately on its discovery I obtained with the 42 inch equatorial, eight good measures of the nucleus from one of the bright stars just mentioned. On the following day I notified the discovery to the Government Observatories of Sydney and Melbourne,� he wrote (Ibid. 117-18).

The American astronomer John Schaeberle discovered his comet on 14 July 1881. Comet Schaeberle 1881 IV, at magnitude 6, was discovered in the pentagon of the constellation Auriga, the Charioteer. It grew a long tail and attained magnitude 3 clearly visible to the unaided eye.

Fortunately, Thomas Bush's attention was attracted to comet Tebbutt that passed above the northern horizon midway between the constellations of Auriga, the Charioteer, and Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.

Thomas Bush was able to put the Astronomer Royals' spectroscope to good use and made a number of precise position measurements between 25 June and 23 August. After the comet's apparition, he reported his findings in a letter to the Nottingham Guardian, a short abstract of which follows: "There's not the smallest orb which thou beholds, but in his motion like an angel sings.�

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Bush then goes on to say: "As the above mysterious visitor to this our 'here' of the universe is rousing a good deal of interest and speculation just now, by its sudden and imposing appearance in our northern skies, perhaps a few words with regard to its aspect as witnessed by instrumental means, and also as to the physical processes which seem to be agitating its substance, may prove, more or less, interesting to your readers.

"Not being aware that the great comet was so favorably situated for observation until the morning of 25 June, 1881, no attempt to observe it had been made, but a watch was kept up as the day declined.

"At about 9.30 p.m. it was distinctly seen, being about 18 or 20 degrees above the northern horizon, inclining a little to the west. The instruments were then put upon it, and speedily the nucleus or head gave signs of complex structure.

"Tumultuous movements were shaking its frame; movements suggestive of those mysterious pulsations of light seen! During the displays of the Aurora.

"At 11 30 p.m.. the head looked as if it were twisted round on the line of site, having a very brilliant core or centre, fairly round and well defined.

"From the head spread 2 fan shaped plumes of light, directed to the N.W. and S.W. Respectively; and likewise a ray pointing to the North.

"The southern side head also appeared enveloped by three sheetlike masses of light having rounded surfaces and stretching in a slanting direction relative to the line of observation.

"The whole bending round and constituting the tail, and presenting delicate detail hardly to be put into words.

"At 11 10 p.m. wave like forms seemed to sweep outwards from the head, and at 12 35 p.m. a jet was seen projected in the direction of the S.E. bending round appositely, and resembling a broad sickle.

The ray mentioned above had also assumed a curved shape, and, 10

further, seemed to indicate that the evolution of another envelope was progressing. Further observations were made intensely interesting. "...The positions of the comet as determined by 3 'lower transit' observations reduced to the Meridian of Greenwich, subject to corrections, have been made as follows: June 25th RA 5 hours 38 minutes. DEC 53 deg. 25 min's north June 26th RA 5 hours 41 minutes. DEC 57 deg. 03 min's north June 27th RA 5 hours 48 minutes. DEC 62 deg. 17 min's north "The comet passes directly overhead daily at about 11.30 PM. On Tuesday night, it presented a most beautiful aspect, the four envelopes looking like delicate plumes of light rolled gracefully round the nucleus.

"Spectroscopic observations show that probably a luminous form of Carbon vapors is one of its constituents."

Thomas Bush also saw the bright comet Schaeberle although it was too low in the sky to make any serious observations.

On 9 December 1874, while Thomas Bush was still living at 102 Canal Street, there was the first of two transits of Venus, and although he possessed a new solar eyepiece from the Astronomer Royal, the observing conditions were very poor and he saw nothing.

However, on 6 December 1882 he had a second chance to observe this rare event from his new observatory at Mapperley.

After observing the planet pass across the face of the Sun, he was invited to give a talk to the Natural Science section of the Nottingham Philosophical Society, and a news item of the event later appeared in the Nottingham Guardian.

In 1879, the town’s men of Nottingham in recognition of his astronomical achievements presented Thomas William Bush F.R.A.S. with a large and valuable sidereal clock.

The clock was made by George Cope, also of Nottingham, and at present is housed at Nottingham College University.

Bush's life at Thyra Grove was very obscure, since few records of his astronomical observations have been handed down. Thomas Bush 11

only lived at his cottage at Alexandra Park for twelve years, before resigning his position at the General Hospital and moving to Lord Forester's private stately home at Willey Park in 1889, taking all of his private papers along with him. Just before leaving Nottingham, he sold his estate to a local builder named Mr. Green (according to the deeds of the new property built on this land), and at the turn of the century, Bush's home and observatory in Thyra Grove were demolished. It is believed that the contractor destroyed any observations or correspondence left behind.

In 1929, William Sadler Franks wrote an obituary for Thomas Bush: Minutes of the Royal Astronomical Society Vol. 890, Page 298, in which he says: [Thomas Bush] “Was in charge of Lord Forrester's Observatory, at Willey Park, where he made many observations of the planets with an 8-in. refractor. He came to live in the district of East Grinstead in 1909, and whilst there made several 24-in. specula and mountings, one of which was intended for Nottingham University.”

However, the present Lord Forester informed me that to his knowledge there was never an observatory at Willey Park!

None of the records I uncovered gives any mention of Thomas Bush’s wife Martha Cecilia Johnston during his time at Thyra grove.

However, one unexpected discovery was that the 1881 Nottingham Census records 70 year-old Elizabeth Bush being an inmate of the Union Road ‘Workhouse’ where she was said to have been a ‘Lace Runner.’ Elizabeth would have been 28 at the time of Bush’s birth in 1839.

Then of course, I found an entry for Isaac Newton, not the scientist himself you understand, another family that happens to have the same Christian name. The last three occupants of Bush's cottage according to the 1891 electoral register were Millicent Newton, Edward Arthur Newton, and Isaac William Newton. It is recorded that the last two members each paid sixteen shillings board & lodging to Millicent.

In 1889, Thomas Bush accepted the position as general helper at Lord Forester's private home at Willey Park, shown here. The main hall of residence there is said to have a fine astrological clock on the front of the building. The present Lord Forester informed me that to 12

his knowledge there have never been an astronomical observatory on his land that Bush may have used. The main business there from 1889 had been farming, although it was coal and ore extraction from the land that had made the Foresters wealthy.

Bush resigned from the Royal Astronomical Society for unknown reasons on 9 March 1900. In the 1970s, his baker & grocery shop at 102 Canal Street was demolished to make way for the Nottingham Crown Court buildings.

At the age of 90, Lord Forester sadly passed away at his house in York on 2 June 1894 and was buried on the Willey estate. Thomas Bush stayed on at Willey lodge where he helped to run the farm.

Four years later, Emma Forester, Lord Forester's second wife, died at Willey lodge on 24 June 1898, she was 59.

Thomas Bush remained here for a further eleven years with the blessing of Cecil Theodore, the 5th Lord Forester.

The photograph on the right is a view inside the great hall at Willey Park.

At the age of 70, Thomas Bush began plans to build a new 24-inch telescope, the same instrument that would be presented as a gift to Nottingham College University in 1929. His new vocation was to build large telescopes for photographing astronomical objects.

In 1909, he moved to West Sussex where he lived at Dormansland, near Dormans. It was here, after setting himself to work building a new Newtonian reflector, that on 10 December 1909, he rejoined the Royal Astronomical Society.

Interestingly, the railway is not very far from East Grinstead connecting it to Dormansland. Today restored steam engines travel this route.

After re-joining, the Royal Astronomical Society Bush would have been aware of William Sadler Frank’s of Newark-On Trent, Nottinghamshire, who was then the coordinator of the Colored Star Section of the relatively new British Astronomical Association. Fiftyone year-old Frank’s was a professional observer at the East Grinstead Brockhurst Observatory.

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In the photograph shown here Thomas Bush is standing at the eyepiece of his home made telescope.

Bush’s new 24-inch telescope had a square iron tube that was boxed using wood. It also had a hefty 48-inch declination circle on one side of the instrument, and a large right ascension circle positioned on the brass mechanism of the telescope mounting. It was weight driven by a gravity clock, and controlled by flyweights with a friction pad. On one side of the tube is an 8-inch reflector that he built himself, with a small 2- inch guide-scope on the other.

While still working on the 24-inch telescope, Bush moved to the observatory of Mr. W.S. Franks of Brockhurst, who appears in Kelley's county directories between 1911 and 1915 at Doona Cottage, Lewes Road, East Grinstead. It was here that Thomas Bush set up his new telescope in a very large run-off shed observatory, and W. S. Franks tested the instrument, however, he was unable to correct all of the faults.

The 24-inch Bush reflector Jeremy Shears FRAS With advancing years, and by now a widower, Bush moved from his home into Sackville College, a residential home for elderly gentlemen on East Grinstead High Street on 1924 January 8 (39). As a result, it was decided to install Bush’s 24-inch telescope at Brockhurst under Franks' supervision. Franks' notebooks describe the installation and testing of the telescope in some detail.

Housing the Bush telescope was clearly a major challenge due to its sheer size, which also necessitated ordering new steps, 6½-feet (2 m) high to access the eyepiece at the Newtonian focus (40). Thus, a run-off shed was erected at Brockhurst during the summer of 1925. It was a corrugated iron structure, which was essentially a movable Nissen hut, some 4.3 m long, 3.2 m wide and 2.7 m high at the top of the corrugated arch. The structure moved on rails twice this length.

There were York stone foundations, brick piers for the mount and an elevated boarded floor. Views of the telescope can be seen in Figure 9.

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Whilst the observatory was ready by the end of 1925 September, installing the telescope and the electrical fittings took some months more, which meant that Franks wasn’t able to achieve “first light” until the following May and even this was only with an unsilvered mirror, with the aim of performing some basic tests and determining the focal length accurately. The telescope “tube” was square in cross-section, being fabricated from an iron framework enclosed with wood panels.

It was mounted on an equatorial fork mount with a weight-driven RA drive constructed from brass. The instrument was equipped with an 8½-inch (22 cm) guide scope (41), to facilitate guiding during longexposure photography, although the instrument was never used for this purpose, and a 2-inch (5 cm) finder scope.

Bush had initially supplied two 24-inch mirrors, which had an effective aperture of 23¾- inches taking into account the retaining ring: Number 1: 1½-inch thick, focus = 98-inches (f/4.1), with a 5-inch central hole Number 2: 23/8-inch thick, focus = 96-inches (f/4.0), with no hole Franks' natural preference was for the Number 2 mirror, which he expected to perform better due to its greater thickness, promising less flexure, the absence of a central hole, which would mean easier silvering, and its greater weight, which would mean that less counterbalance ballast would be needed at the opposite end of the tube. Nevertheless, his first tests were with the Number 1 mirror.

Initially these were conducted in the daytime, with the first night-time observations on 1926 Jun 21: “Had two hours with the new telescope from 8.0 to 10.0 PM. Moon tolerable, but, of course, no test. Arcturus and Saturn both gave distorted double images – the ring of [Saturn] unrecognisable. On the other hand the 8½” showed good images of both!” What a disappointment it must have been after all the effort expended!

Over subsequent days, Franks, slackened the mirror-retaining ring, rotated the mirror by 90° and changed the flat, but no improvements in the images were forthcoming. Initially he considered that the problem was due to unstable atmospheric seeing and the rapid drop in temperature during the evening. However, on July 8 the seeing was “steady – a perfect night, but the great mirror performed no better….the fault must be with the mirror itself, to produce this optical distortion.” Thus on he installed the Number 2 mirror, but “it showed 15

exactly the same kind of distortion as no.1, but smaller” (42). Then on July 15, performing a star test on Arcturus, “to my agreeable surprise, I got a neat image at last! It seems chiefly a matter of atmosphere and temperature?”

Using the telescope during 1926 August and September was a frustrating experience: on some nights acceptable images were obtained, whereas on others observing was impossible. He also tried various aperture masks, without success. Nonetheless, Franks sent the Number 2 mirror to H.N. Irving’s of Ipswich for silvering. He had to wait until 1927 January before he could use the silvered mirror under excellent conditions, but even then “Mars was mostly distorted, though at times shrunk to a passable disc” (44). Star tests were also disappointing. “It seems pretty conclusive”, Franks noted, “that under all the varied tests, it must be the figure of the 24” that is not truly parabolic…The tolerable images are only transitory; never permanent or perfect - as in all other specula I have seen”.

Franks carried out further tests throughout 1927 and into the spring of 1928. It wasn’t until 1928 June 1, nearly three years since the telescope was installed, that he was able to conclude “The 24-inch ‘Bush’ reflector may now be considered as practically in working order”. However, it was not until a year later that he commenced systematic observations with it (46) and still the views through it were highly variable. On one memorable evening, he observed M8, M17 and M20; they were “very fine, much like Lord Rosse’s drawing[s] – best views I have had yet”.

In accordance with Bush’s plans, the telescope was ultimately destined for Nottingham University, so in 1928 August, four months after Bush’s death, Franks received a visit from several members of University staff including Dr. Henry H.L.A. Brose (1890-1965; Figure 10). Brose had been a Reader in Physics at the University since 1919 and would later become Professor. A few days later, a delegation came from the Royal Observatory Greenwich to see the telescope, followed the next month by BAA President W.H. Steavenson. Steavenson’s main objective was to test a third 24-inch Bush mirror, of even shorter focus, 82-inches at f/3.5! which he found “satisfactory”. It would clearly take some time for the University to make arrangements to receive the telescope.

Franks obtained some good results over the next year, including his best ever views of M42 and M1, but frustratingly these were 16

interspersed with many poor nights. Then during an observing session on 1929 June 28, the driving clock failed and it wasn’t repaired until a year later – in the meantime Franks had embarked on another observing project, which was to survey diffuse nebulae with the 61/8-inch Cooke refractor, and which will be discussed later. By this time he was probably frustrated by the variable results with the Bush reflector, for the next time he recorded observing with it was on 1930 June 30, and six days later he made his final observation with the telescope.

Franks devoted a page of one notebook to summarising his frustrating experiences with the telescope, concluding that he “reluctantly found it unsuitable for visual use. The focus is far too short except for photo work, for which it was really intended. For critical definition it was nowhere comparable to the 61/8” Cooke O.G….The only objects on which it performed satisfactorily were Clusters and Nebulae…Upon these it gave some wonderful views, surpassing anything we had previously seen”. He described the mounting as “very rough…causing much waste of time and energy – so that the fatigue involved spoilt any pleasure in using so cumbersome and instrument. Thus for photographic work, “the mounting would have to be scrapped, and a proper modern equipment substituted. Perhaps not worth the effort?”

Clearly the mechanical aspects of the Bush reflector left much to be desired, with Franks noting on one occasion that “the mechanical parts of the 24” gave much trouble, and it requires drastic attention”.

Mounting and maintaining the figure of such a large mirror is difficult, since it is liable to flex under its own weight. Moreover, telescopes of this aperture are much more susceptible to the effects temperature variations and to local seeing conditions. This might explain why good views were only obtained on a few nights. However, there were undoubtedly other factors contributing to the disappointing results.

Firstly, the collimation of such short focal length systems is notoriously critical, as any modern amateur astronomer using a fast Dobsonian telescope will attest, as is maintaining collimation. Franks only mentions collimating the mirrors occasionally, although he might have done it more often. The second factor is the eyepieces that Franks had to hand. These were mostly “simple” designs of the Huyghenian and Ramsden configuration, which, whilst giving good images with long focal length refractors (and some were “borrowed” from the 61/8-inch Cooke), they are doomed to failure when used with “fast” optics. Later Franks ordered some “Orthoscopic” 17

eyepieces from Cooke, Troughton & Simms, which were slightly better, although one of these he had to send back because it did not meet his expectations. Today we are fortunate in having a great variety of advanced eyepieces available, which are specifically designed for fast instruments.

Although located at Brockhurst, the 24-inch reflector was the personal property of Bush, or, upon his death Bush’s estate (52).

Thus, in spite of Franks' rather damning impression of the telescope, it was finally dismantled in 1934 and transported to Nottingham University on 1935 April 27. Perhaps the University would have more resources available to bring to it. Thus, it was set up on the University grounds in Shakespeare Street during the summer, but the staff was never able to get the driving clock working properly, something, which Franks himself, had struggled with over the year. The instrument was therefore dismantled and put into storage in a cellar.

The University building and the telescope were damaged by a German bomb during the “Nottingham Blitz” of 1941 May. What remains of the telescope, including the mirror, are today stored at the University’s Highfield campus.

--------------------------------Thomas Bush was 84 years old when he retired to live at Sackville College that is still located a few yards down Lewes road.

Sackville College is a Jacobean almshouse in town of East Grinstead, West Sussex, England. It was founded in 1609 with money left by Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset. Throughout its history, it has provided sheltered accommodation for the elderly.

According to the official website: “The College is built of Sussex sandstone around a quadrangle and contains large mullioned windows and four exquisite old doorways, the northern one of which bears the Dorset Coat of Arms. These almshouses are a splendid example of Jacobean architecture.

“The principle rooms are the Chapel with its original carved door and the Great Hall with its Minstrels' Gallery and hammer beam roof.

“A previous Warden was the Victorian hymnologist, the Revd. Dr. John Mason Neale. In his study adjoining the Chapel, he wrote many well-known hymns and carols, including "Good King Wenceslas" and "Jerusalem the Golden". Dr. Neale, who died here in 1866 after 18

twenty years as warden, also founded the first Anglican sisterhood, the Order of St. Margaret, and was one of the leading figures in the Oxford movement, which endeavored to revitalize high-church institutions.”

The County Archivist, Mr. Richard Childs BA. DAA, of West Sussex Records Office, kindly searched through the records held at County Hall and reported, "We hold the records of Sackville College (WSRO Ref. Add. Ms. 17826-18013) and the parish records for East Grinstead at this office. I checked the catalogues of these records but could find no specific reference to Mr. Bush. However, I checked Add.Ms. 17836, which is a record of Sackville College Pensioners and Inmates, and found an entry for him."

The paper indicates that he entered Sackville College “a widower” on 8 January 1924, the fee being £100 a year. It also shows that his “sister-in-law” was ill at the time, although no name or address was supplied to the college.

While researching her family history, Patricia Reehl of Swanley, Kent, a relative of Thomas Bush, uncovered another Nottingham connection with East Grinstead in Noreen Bush who would have been 19 years-old in 1924 she writes: “Interestingly, Noreen Bush born 1905 in Nottingham was the founder-principal of the Bush- Davies Ballet Schools. Noreen was appointed head scholarship teacher to the Royal Academy of Dancing in 1929 and became a member of the Academy’s Grand council in 1929. In 1930 in conjunction with Victor Leopold, she opened a school in London. By 1939 she joined forces with Marjory Davies to establish two schools one at East Grinstead and the other at Romford.”

I later learned that the Bush Davies School of Theatre Arts was a renowned dance and performing arts school in the United Kingdom.

Founded by the dance teacher Pauline Bush in Nottingham in 1914, and later with branches in Romford and East Grinstead, it would become recognised as one of the foremost performing arts schools in the United Kingdom, until its closure in 1989.

Sadly, with increasing ill health, Thomas William Bush FRAS died here on Monday 23 April 1928, he was 88 years-old.

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Bush’s close friend, Mr. Percy Sharman, who was a professor of music at the college, was appointed the executor of Mr. Bush's will and he took charge of the contents of his room. Bush’s Probate record reads: “Thomas William Bush of Sackville College East Grinstead.

Administration with Will 16.6.1928 to Percy Victor Sharman.

Professor of Music. Effects £708 3s 10d. Probate 1928 London.”

Professor Sharman acted according to the last wishes of the late Mr. Bush, by contacting Mr. J.E. Shimeld at University College, Nottingham, to present him with Bush's scientific instruments, books and the great 24 inch reflector, that are all still held in storage on the new campus today. These include the gold medal presented by Queen Victoria. A 1613 Bible covered in black leather, an 1800 folio Bible, and a rare 1682 Botanical book: 'The Anatomy of Plants,' by Nehemiah Grew.

The Anatomy of Plants: With an idea of a philosophical history of plants, and several other lectures, read before the Royal Society• By Nehemiah Grew M.D. Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the College of Physicians. Printed by W. Rawlins, for the author, 1682 – with 320 pages.

Bush's religion was Church of England; furthermore, the funeral service that followed on Friday 27th of April was carried out according to the ancient rites and ordinances of the college. The brothers and sisters all paid their respects by following Bush to the gates of the building, and the service then followed in the Sackville Chapel shown here.

The actual site of Thomas Bush's final resting place is still a mystery.

Mr. Martin Hayes, the Principal Local Studies Librarian at Worthing library, West Sussex, made a number of enquiries, however he drew a blank, and I can say with certainty no one was buried in the grounds of Sackville College.

"As regards his burial place, officers at East Grinstead Town Council checked the burial registers for Mount Noddy & Queens's road cemeteries but no record of his burial is listed. The parish churchyard at St. Swithun's was closed by 1928 according to Canon Roger Brown the present incumbent."

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Bush's obituary notices were published in Nottingham, nationally, and in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, volume 89.

At this point, I believe it fitting to quote from two of the obituary columns. The first is from Mr. W.S. Franks writing in The Courier: "By those who knew him he was esteemed for his sterling qualities, though not seeking publicity. He was an expert mechanic as well as a mathematician; designing and building a number of large reflecting telescopes, some of them with mirrors two feet in diameter.

"He was a classical scholar and could quote passages from Shakespeare, Goth, and Schiller with much facility, besides having a pretty thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin..."

The second obituary abstract is from Mr. F.C. Poynder writing in 'The National Deposit Friendly Society magazine, April 1932, page 89: "Mr. Bush's mathematical attainments were of a very high order. He had a wide knowledge of History and Geography. He could read the Old and New Testament in their original languages and could read French and German. He had a great interest in Philosophy.

"He was well read in general literature; had a great love of music; and was an ardent admirer of Shakespeare and Shelley, whose words were often on his lips.

"When it is added that he had an intimate knowledge of farming and knew all about Mechanics, we may justly say that intellectually he was among the giants. It was only due to his total lack of ambition and his indifference to the world’s prizes that he did not attain to a position of pre-eminence in any one of half a dozen subjects.

"But we shall form a very incomplete picture of him if we omit his nobility of character. He was courteous, gentle, and lovable, with that greatness which results from the union of brilliant intellect with loftiness of character, complete simplicity."

In East Grinstead the young television astronomer Sir. Patrick Moore befriended Mr. William Sadler Frank's who introduced him to stargazing. In 1930, the 24-inch telescope was already dismantled ready for dispatch to Nottingham; Patrick had full use of all the other telescopes at the observatory. Sadly, William Sadler Frank’s died 21

suddenly in a road accident after being knocked off his bicycle in 1935.

At the Convention of the Antique Telescope Society held at Bath in September 1996, I gave a lecture on the life of Thomas Bush, Sir. Patrick Moore told me afterwards that he had the original observation books compiled by W.S. Frank's, and that a number were written by Bush himself. Patrick also informed the meeting that he had many photographs showing the observatory and the telescopes there.

The 24-inch telescope was brought back to Nottingham, where it was set up on the former University grounds in Shakespeare Street during the summer of 1935. Unfortunately, the University staff was unable to get the gravity clock mechanism of the telescope to work properly. It was then dismantled and put into storage in the cellar of the University building. Sadly, along with the University, the telescope was damaged during World War II on the night of the Blitz, 10 May 1941. What remains of the telescope is today at Nottingham University’s Highfield campus.

Thomas William Bush 1835 - 1928 Images

Standard Hill Academy, Nottingham, 1877

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Above 102 Canal Street, Nottingham, The site of Bush is second home.

Below 102 canal Street, Nottingham, from the back. This is the site of Bush's second home.

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Below is an 1880 Map showing Thyra grove, Nottingham, the site of Bush's home and observatory in 1870.

A plan of Thomas Bush's home and observatory in Thyra Grove, Nottingham.

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Above John Browning, London, Direct vision Hand Spectroscope c. 1885.

The Narrow Boat Inn, Canal Street, Nottingham, site of Bush's childhood home 25

26

Comet Tebbutt, an observation by Thomas Bush made on 4 July 1881.

27

Comet Tebbutt, a second observation by Thomas Bush made on 4 July 1881.

28

Willey Hall, Shropshire, the residential home of Lord Forester.

29

Sackville College, East Grinstead, and the chapel below.

30

William Sadler Franks with Thomas Bush's 24 inch telescope, 1928.

31

Thomas William Bush at the eyepiece of his finder-scope, which is attached to the side of the giant 24-inch telescope, 1927.

32

Astronomer Royal Sir George Biddle Airy 1801-1891

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2. WILLIAM SADLER FRANKS 1851 – 1935

By Sir Patrick Moore & Jeremy Shears

In 1934, I was elected a member of the British Astronomical Association. I was not exactly advanced in years - I was, in fact, eleven - but already I knew some BAA members, and the one who really stands out in my memory is William Sadler Franks.

He was born in Newark, Nottinghamshire, on 26 April 1851. He became fascinated by astronomy at an early age, and before long, he had acquired a small telescope, which he set up in a homemade observatory. He was keen to carry out systematic work, and he decided to concentrate on the colors of the stars; this, remember, was well before the real development of spectroscopy. His first contribution was a 'Catalogue of the Colors of 3890 Stars', communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878 by no less a person than the Rev. T. W. Webb, of Celestial Objects fame. The Catalogue showed that despite his limited telescopic equipment, Franks was an extremely accurate and conscientious observer. His interest in star colors lasted all his life, and he became Director of the Star Color Section of the Liverpool Astronomical Society, then the premier amateur organisation in the country.

The Liverpool society collapsed with surprising suddenness - or rather, became a local rather than a national body - and was to all intents and purposes succeeded by the BAA, founded in 1890.

Franks was not an Original Member of the BAA, but he joined in the following year, and when a Star Color Section was formed, Franks became its Director. He served in this capacity until 1894, when he was succeeded by G. F. Chambers.

The Star Color Section published several Memoirs; it is fascinating to look back at them. The first report forms Part III of Volume I of our Memoirs, and in it, Franks laid down the procedure to be followed.

There were four grades: palest tint, pale, normal and full. Thus, R1 indicated 'ruddy white', R2 was pale red, R3 was red, and R4 very red. Stars with no detectable color were marked zero. Others were Orange (Or), Yellow (Y), Green (G), Blue (B) and Purplish or Violet (V). There could be combinations of these, such as YG, yellowishgreen. Of course the observations were purely visual, and most members of the team used small refractors; thus E. H. Blakeney of 34

Dewsbury (3-inch [75mm] OG), G. T. Davis of Reading (3-inch [94mm] OG), and the Rev. W. R. Waugh of Portland (4-inch [112mm] OG). There were a few reflectors; the largest was the 9-inch [240mm] used by R. W. Buttemer of Godalming. Franks himself used his 3-inch OG. Generally speaking, the color estimates were surprisingly good.

Among bright stars, only Vega was recorded as definitely blue and Beta Librae as definitely green. Here are some typical examples, with their modern spectral types: The last Memoir of the Section formed Part II of Volume IX, but by then Franks had retired as Director, and the Catalogue of Red Stars for 1900' was produced by his successor. Apart from the fact that Achernar somehow crept into the list, it too agreed well with modern results. However, spectroscopy was taking over, and the Star Color Section quietly faded away; by the time I joined the BAA, in 1934, the Section was long defunct. However, Franks retained his interest. He contributed several papers to the Monthly Notices of the RAS, and in 1921 undertook a revision of the colors of 6000 stars; this was at the request of Father Hagen, the Vatican astronomer, who published the results in 1923 in a special edition of the Specola Vaticana.

In the meantime, Isaac Roberts had set up an observatory at Crowborough in Sussex, and equipped it with a 20-inch [500mm] reflector. In 1892, Franks joined him, and became adept at photographing star clusters and nebulae; his pictures were among the best of their time. This work continued until Roberts died in 1904; alas, nothing now remains of the observatory. Franks left Crowborough in 1906 and went to live in Uxbridge, where he had several small engagements at private observatories; he also gave valuable assistance to John Franklin-Adams in the preparation of his famous star charts.

This photograph shows Isaac Robert’s 20-inch telescope inside his observatory.

Then, in 1910, Franks made what was to be his final move, to East Grinstead in Sussex. He joined F. J. Hanbury, who was a millionaire (associated with the firm of Allen and Hanbury); his main interest was in growing orchids, about which he was a world authority, but he was also interested in astronomy, and established an observatory at his home, Brockhurst, with Franks as the official astronomer-in35

charge. By modern standards Brockhurst was modest; the main telescope was a Cooke 6-inch [155mm] refractor, though for a while there was also a 24-inch [600mm] Bush reflector. The position, accurately worked out by Franks, was latitude 51° 7’ 27” North, longitude 2°.27 E, altitude 435 feet. There was a neat building, with an excellent revolving dome, an annex, and also a transit instrument.

Franks worked here for the rest of his life, and he was most certainly not idle. He bought a house half a mile away, off the Lewes Road, and named it 'Starfield' after Isaac Roberts' observatory.

Star colors were always very much to the fore, but at Brockhurst, the main work was in making micrometrical measurements of double stars. The Cooke refractor was very suitable for this, and Franks was a superbly accurate observer. He worked unceasingly; the most important results were those of the period between 1914 and 1920, and were published in various papers communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1923, the RAS Council awarded him its Jackson-Guilt Medal. There were other aspects to his work; in fact, his very last paper, published in the RAS Monthly Notices in January 1930, dealt with Barnard's Dark Nebulae. He also made beautiful drawings of the planets, and some lunar features.

In 1892, he issued a report on the work of the previous 2 years, including an account of all the stars observed in the circumpolar and northern zones, consisting of 129 and 275 stars, respectively. These were part of 940 stars scheduled for observation in four zones comprising 52 constellations. In 1921, at the instigation of Father Johann Hagen, Franks embarked on a revision of the color estimates of some 6,000 stars. His labors on star colors were published in a volume of the Specola Vaticana (1923).

In 1892, Franks joined Isaac Roberts at his Crowborough Observatory where he engaged in photographing nebulae and star clusters with the 20-in. reflector until the sudden death of his employer in 1904. Two years later, after assisting Dorthca Klumpkc Roberts in organizing her late husband's records and closing the observatory, Franks went to live in Uxbridge, a suburb of London.

During the next few years, he worked at a number of small private observatories including Mervel Hill where he assisted John FranklinAdams in the preparation of his star charts for publication.

Isaac Roberts was born in Denbigh, North Wales. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Liverpool. The City was 36

experiencing rapid growth and in this atmosphere, Roberts became apprenticed to a local building firm in 1814. Working his way up through the ranks, he became owner of the building firm himself.

During this period, he moved to 26 Rock Park, Rock Ferry, Cheshire, a house once owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne, when the latter was U.S. Consul in Liverpool.

Whilst living in Rock Park, Roberts become interested in Astronomy and on moving to Maghull, Lancashire in 1878 pursued his interest even further. By 1885, he had built an observatory with a 20-inch reflector.

Using this instrument Roberts was to make considerable progress in the newly developing science of Astro-photography. He photographed numerous celestial objects including Orion Nebula and Pleiades but undoubtedly, his finest work was a photograph of the Great Nebula in Andromeda, M31 on December 29th 1888.

In addition to his contribution to Astro-photography Roberts also devised a machine to be used to engrave stellar positions on copper plates, known as Stellar Pantograver. He was also a geologist of some considerable note. Roberts was a frequent contributor to the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society and served on numerous scientific committees. He was a life member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1890, he moved to Crowborough, Sussex and in 1901 married, the Paris based American Astronomer Dorethea Klumpke. Dorethea (1861 to 1942) who was a well-known astronomer in her own right and is regarded as an important pioneer of the involvement of women in science. Despite his age, in his seventies, Roberts continued his astronomical work. On the day of his death, July 17th 1904, he had spent the early morning examining negatives.

In his will, Roberts left money to assist students at the University of Liverpool and the University of Wales. His memorial, erected by his wife, is in Flaybrick Cemetery, Birkenhead, Merseyside.

He was a familiar figure in East Grinstead; almost every day he could be seen bicycling from his house to the Observatory. It is no disrespect to say that he looked remarkably like a gnome. He was no more than five feet tall; he always wore a skullcap, and he had a characteristic white beard. He still attended meetings in London, but 37

then, sadly, he had a cycling accident and never recovered. He died on 19 June 1935, in his eighty-fifth year, universally regretted.

This is where I come into the story. My home in East Grinstead was directly opposite the Brockhurst estate. Of course, we knew the Hanbury’s, and it was there that I first met Franks - over dinner at Brockhurst one evening. I know that I had just been proposed as a BAA member (by another well-known astronomer, Major A. E. Levin), so it must have been in early 1934. Franks could not have been kinder or more helpful. I was able to join him in observing, and he taught me most of what I know; I spent happy hours in 'Starfield'.

When he died, I was frankly shattered. I felt as though I had lost a very dear friend - as indeed I had.

The Observatory was still in full order, though the Bush reflector had been removed (in fact I never saw it). Hanbury was then over ninety, and he gave me a surprise. Sometimes he needed an astronomer to 'show stars' to his guests; would I like to fill this role? If so, I could take charge of the observatory. You can well imagine that it did not take long for me to make up my mind. It is not every fourteen-yearold who has the chance to be an Observatory Director! In addition, I was tutor-educated at home. I had been destined for Eton, but by the age of thirteen it had become clear that I was not fit enough to go, so I was wholly East Grinstead based.

I hope I fulfilled my duties adequately; at least there were no complaints, and of course, I had full use of the Cooke. It could not last. Hanbury died in early 1939, and the observatory was sold. If I had had ÂŁ40 I could have bought the telescope, but that was beyond me. I did acquire the observatory steps (which I still use), and Franks' observing books were handed over to me; also his personal copies of Webb's Celestial Objects, since Franks had been involved in preparing the final, Sixth Edition. The double star books have been handed to the BAA; the rest will follow.

Trees now grow over the site of Brockhurst Observatory, but 'Starfield' is still there, and I went to see it a few weeks ago. The present owners made me very welcome, and had no objection to my taking photographs. It was strange to be back in that familiar room, after nearly seventy years, and I could briefly imagine that I was thirteen again instead of seventy- eight!

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Certainly, I for one will never forget W. S. Franks. He was a charming, modest man, and all who knew him appreciated his delightful personality. I am glad to have known him.

Selected References Chapman, Allan (1998). The Victorian Amateur Astronomer: Independent Astronomical Research in Britain. 1820-1920. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

Frank, W. S. (circa 1892). 'Report of the Section for the Observation of the Colors of Stars. 'Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association 1. pt. 3. Kelly, Howard L. (1948). The British Astronomical Association: The First Fifty Years. London: B.A.A., pp. 120-121.

Steavenson, W. H. (1936). ‘William Sadler Franks.'' Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 96:291 -292.

William Sadler Franks and the Brockhurst Observatory Jeremy Shears FRAS Introduction During 2013, Richard Baum kindly presented me with three notebooks of astronomical observations made by William Sadler Franks at the Brockhurst Observatory, near East Grinstead, Sussex, between 1909 and Franks' death in 1935. They mainly contain notes of his observations of double stars, the moon, planets, nebulae and any passing comets that he made with the observatory’s 61/8-inch (15.5 cm) Cooke refractor. Richard had looked after the notebooks since Patrick Moore (1923-2012) gave them to him in about 1956.

Patrick Moore, as a boy in the 1930’s, had known Franks and was a regular visitor to the Brockhurst Observatory, which lay across the road from the Moore family home. The observatory was owned by the wealthy industrialist F.J. Hanbury (1851-1938) and Franks, as the astronomer-in-charge, was expected to entertain Hanbury’s guests by showing them celestial objects through the telescope. For the rest of the time, Franks was free to use the observatory as he wished.

When Franks died in 1935, Hanbury invited the young Patrick Moore to take on the same function. This arrangement ended when Hanbury himself died in 1938 and the following year the observatory was sold.

Franks' notebooks were handed to Patrick Moore, along with his personal copy of Webb’s Celestial Objects, the sixth edition of which he has helped to prepare for publication. Over the years, Patrick Moore passed several of the notebooks on to others, but it is hoped 39

one day to reunite them as part of the BAA archive. Patrick Moore described his personal recollections of his involvement with Franks and the Brockhurst Observatory in a paper in this Journal in 2002 (1).

Franks was a major influence on the young Patrick Moore.

Reading the three notebooks now in my possession provides an insight into Franks' astronomical interests and how they evolved over the years. What soon becomes clear is that Franks was, in modern parlance, “project orientated”. That is to say, he tended to concentrate much of his observational work on a specific project, such as double stars, diffuse nebulae, dark nebulae, for a particular period, usually concluding with the publication of a paper on the subject, before moving onto a new project. Of course, he also kept an eye on other comings and goings in the sky, such as planetary oppositions and bright comets. Franks also made notes of other nonastronomical happenings, such as meteorological events, and which visitors he entertained at the observatory. He also describes how he maintained and improved the observatory’s instrumentation. Of special note is his description of the installation and testing of a large reflector at Brockhurst: the 24-inch (60 cm) Newtonian which was built by Thomas William Bush (1839-1928).

This paper explores Franks' observational work at Brockhurst as well as the commissioning of the Bush telescope, based on his notebook writings.

W.S. Franks' early life Franks was born at Newark, Nottinghamshire, on 1851 April 26 and was initially involved in his father’s business in Leicester (2). He became interested in astronomy at an early age and soon set up a small observatory. He developed a particular interest in star colors, which he maintained throughout the rest of his life. His first major publication was A Catalogue of the Colors of 3890 Stars, which was communicated to the RAS on his behalf by the Reverend T.W. Webb (1807-1885) in 1878. It was therefore no surprise when Franks became Director of the Star Colors Section of the Liverpool Astronomical Society in the 1880s and subsequently served in the same capacity in the BAA from its establishment in 1890 until 1894 when he handed the baton to G.F. Chambers (1841-1915).

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In 1892, Franks joined Isaac Roberts (1829-1904) at his Crowborough observatory where he was engaged in photographing nebulae and star clusters with the 20-inch (50 cm) reflector. Many of the impressive photographs presented by Roberts at meetings of the RAS to warm applause were taken by Franks. Upon Roberts’s death in 1904, he spent a further two years assisting Roberts’s widow, Dorothea Klumpke Roberts (1861-1942), in organising her late husband’s records and closing the observatory. Having completed that task in 1906, Franks moved to Uxbridge during which time he had several small engagements connected with private observatories, including John Franklin-Adams’s Mervel Hill Observatory, near Godalming in Surrey. Franklin-Adams (1843-1912; Figure 1) had carried out a photographic charting programme of the southern sky from South Africa and Franks assisted him in preparing the photographs for publication. Franklin-Adams was preparing to return to the Cape in 1909 when he passed away, leaving Franks' future again uncertain.

The move to Brockhurst Franks' involvement with the Brockhurst Observatory began in September 1909. The observatory was located on the Brockhurst estate of Frederick Janson Hanbury, whose personal wealth was established through the family firm of Allen and Hanbury Ltd, a pharmaceutical company, of which he was senior partner (3).

Hanbury’s main interest was in botany and horticulture; he was a well-known expert on orchids. He maintained a large staff of gardeners and turned Brockhurst into a world-famous famous garden in the 20 years following his purchase of the estate in 1908 (4). The observatory had a painted canvas dome (Figure 2) which housed the 61/8-inch f/13.3 Cooke refractor on a mahogany English equatorial mounting. In addition, there was a portable tripod-mounted 3½-inch f/13.7 refractor. It appears that Hanbury was no great observer himself, but he enjoyed entertaining his guests, about whom we shall hear more later, by showing them objects after dinner and this is where Franks came in as “observer”.

Franks' first notebook, Astronomical Diary and Observations (I), covering the period 1909-23 (Figure 3) begins with a description of the observatory written during his first visit after his appointment, on 1909 September 11. Franks' initial task was to organise the remounting of the Cooke refractor, which involved raising the mount’s piers and the roof a few inches. He does not explain why this was 41

necessary, but it is possible that a smaller telescope had been installed previously. At the same time, adjustments were made to the driving clock mechanism on the RA gear and taller observatory steps were ordered. Franks' first observations with the remounted telescope were of the sun and stars on September 23. For the first few months, he was still living in Uxbridge, so most of his visits were limited to daytime and early evening. He occasionally recorded observations made at Uxbridge including his first sighting of comet 1P/Halley on 1910 April 26, which he also followed throughout May from Brockhurst. By the autumn of 1910, he was living near East Grinstead, within cycling distance of the observatory, so he was able to intensify his observing programme. He named his house “Starfield” after Isaac Robert’s observatory. Nevertheless he made two extended trips back to Mervel Hill during October to conclude his work on the late Franklin-Adams‘s observations. Franklin-Adams‘s Photographic Chart of the Heavens was eventually published between 1912 and 1914.

As well as astronomical observations, Franks also initiated a programme of meteorological recording in the summer of 1911.

However, he was shocked by an act of apparent vandalism on his new weather station on August 18: “Found, on arrival at Brockhurst this morning that a wanton outrage had been committed during the night by some mischievous intruders. All the meterol [ogical] instr [uments] were deliberately smashed; all woodwork injured and even the brick pillars knocked over bodily. The glass ball of [the sun] recorder was missing – either hidden or stolen”. He therefore had to re-establish the station and it wasn’t until 1913 January that the Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder was used again, for the glass ball of was recovered from a nearby hedgerow, largely undamaged, save a slight chip.

Visitors to the Brockhurst Observatory Judging by the accounts in Frank’s notebooks, entertaining visitors was not a particularly onerous task. Typically, only one or two groups of visitors would descend upon him a month and often several months went by without any. The organisation, which attended most regularly, was the local troop of Girl Guides who were generally treated to two evenings at Brockhurst every August. At other times, local church groups and YMCA members attended. However, of course it was Hanbury’s personal dinner guests that were really that ones that Franks needed to take care of. Many of these were fellow 42

plant experts or gardeners, but business associates and national dignitaries were also represented. Probably the most illustrious visitor was HRH the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden (1882-1973; the future King Gustav VI Adolf, who visited on 1925 August 13, along with his aide-de-camp. The Prince was also a renowned horticulturalist, known for his extensive rhododendron collection.

Other dignitaries included Lord and Lady Aberconway, who developed the gardens at Bodnant in north Wales, Sir Arthur Fenton Hort, a plantsman, Sir George Truscott, local Baronet and businessman, and Lady Lockyer, the widow of the spectroscopist Sir Norman Lockyer.

Of course, it was the visitors that Franks hosted on the evening of 1933 August 21, a Monday that were particularly auspicious in an astronomical context: a certain “Mr. Moore and family”. They must have been impressed with their view of Vega, the “double-double star” ε Lyr and the Ring Nebula, M57, for “Mr. Moore and son”, the 10-year old Patrick, returned to the observatory the following week and “looked at a number of interesting objects” through the telescope.

Franks' first observations at Brockhurst During 1910 and 1911, Franks undertook observations of a wide variety of objects, including double stars, colored stars (14), nebulae and planets. He had an usually clear view of Venus at half-phase on 1911 December 6, when “[b]esides the normal fading off towards the term [inator], felt quite certain of some ill-defined dusky patches (something like lunar seas, only greatly attenuated), though they are not definitive enough to draw”. He reported a similar effect in 1913: “disc distinctly mottled and patchy – there seemed something like lunar ‘seas’, but so v. faint as to defy delineation”.

Franks was also afforded some splendid views of Mars during the 1911 opposition. One of his best views was on December 13, after a dull day with some rain, when he “Got 2 sketches of Mars…def[inition] v. good…..the details came out unusually well – the planet having more of a map aspect than usual”. These sketches can be seen in Figure 5.

One of the first projects that Franks engaged in was to investigate the limiting magnitude of stars that could be observed during daylight.

With the 61/8-inch refractor, he could certainly see down to mag 4.6, 43

providing that the sky was free of haze, the star was more than 60° from the sun and the horizon and within 3 hours of the meridian. He found a magnification of x200 to be best, although the colors of the stars were not as vivid at night. He found 187 daylight stars in this way.

Observing conditions at Brockhurst were excellent, with the zodiacal light being visible regularly. It wasn’t until 1931 that the nearby main Lewes Road was illuminated with electric lights.

Double star measurements In 1913, Franks set about a programme of improving the observatory facilities to enable him to embark on a project of double star observations, which was to consume much of his observing time over the next seven years. Although he had access to a micrometer he found the results unsatisfactory, thus during the summer he ordered a new micrometer from T. Cooke & Sons of York. At the same time, he oversaw the construction of a transit room adjoining the main observatory, which meant that observing had to be suspended during May and June. The transit instrument, a 2¾-inch (7 cm) f/11.6 refractor by Troughton & Simms, was duly installed and Franks carefully sketched the view of the meridian horizon looking south towards Forest Hills, about 5 miles (8 km) away, including the positions of the trees.

Measurements with the 61/8-inch refractor equipped with the new micrometer began in earnest in September. By the end of the first month, Franks had made measurements of 73 stars on 21 nights and by the end of the first year of the project, he had 838 measurements of 575 stars on 164 nights. The first paper resulting from the project was published in 1914 April, entitled “Micrometrical measures of 360 wide double stars”, followed by another in December, with at least one additional paper appearing each year until 1920 (20). In recognition of his work, in 1923 he was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt medal of the RAS). The high quality of his work quickly became known widely and he received a specific request from R.G. Aitken (1864-1951) of the Lick Observatory to provide measurements of large proper motion double stars.

During the first year of the project, Franks found that he needed to make several adjustments to the telescope mount to improve its tracking accuracy and thereby facilitate the use of the micrometer.

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This involved replacing the RA bearings and installing a new drive gear, which is shown in Figure 7. He was particularly proud of the fact that the latter was completely designed and fabricated in the Brockhurst estate workshops by one of the machinists, Mr. J.S. Adams. After several months of effort in fine-tuning the equipment, Franks heralded his opinion that the instrument “is now in first class order; probably even better than when it first left the maker’s hands many years ago”. Even then, some double stars were too challenging for the Cooke telescope to resolve and occasionally Franks would seek permission to use the 28-inch (71 cm) refractor at Greenwich.

The pace and focus with which Franks worked on the double star project is remarkable. Apart from occasional equipment problems – the micrometer was sometimes sent to T. Cooke & Sons for adjustment or to have its hairs replaced - and maintenance breaks, observations were made virtually every clear night. The only interruptions to his work were the visitors and on one occasion, he wrote tersely in his notebook “A really splendid night, but unfortunately best part of it was monopolised by visitors”. Another annoyance was the introduction of “Daylight Savings” time in World War One, which meant it didn’t get dark until late, a situation, which Franks found “an unmitigated nuisance” as it reduced the number of measurements he was able to make during the summer months. The Great War received little other comment from Franks, although he did wonder whether the torrential rainfall experienced during 1917 July might have been connect with the “unprecedented artillery duel in Flanders” - a potential link much debated in the columns of the English Mechanic at the time. He also heard an explosion during the evening of 1917 May 20 during a thunderstorm, which turned out to be the result of lightning striking a munitions works at Tonbridge, Kent, some 25 km away, causing it to explode.

Hagen’s and Espin’s red stars Franks does not explain what brought his double star observations to an end, but it appears that he made relatively few observations during the period between submitting his final double star list to the RAS in 1920 and early 1923 when he embarked on a new project.

This involved returning to his first love: the observations of the star colors. The renewed activity was apparently stimulated by a request from Father J.G. Hagen (1847-1930) of the Vatican Observatory to determine the mean visual color of around 6000 red stars. Franks soon extended the work to orange and red stars in the Draper 45

Catalogue, which he presented to the RAS on 1924 November 14, and, in 1925, to observations of red stars recently listed by T.H.E.C. Espin (1858-1934). Franks took a break from his red star observations during late summer and autumn 1924 to observe Mars at opposition, during which he was able to see the satellites Phobos and Deimos for the first time in his life, over several nights.

Franks and the nebulae After a lifetime of stellar and planetary observations, it is perhaps surprising that Franks' last two major projects were on the nebulae.

Fr. Hagen, with whom Franks corresponded for many years and who had encouraged his star colour observations, suggested that Franks might observe some of the neglected nebulae from William Herschel’s catalogues, the existence of some of which was disputed.

Franks embarked on the project during 1927 October, concluding it the following summer. He used the 61/8-inch Cooke refractor and probably saw this as a welcome diversion from the trials and tribulations of the 24-inch reflector; presumably with the greater light gathering power of the latter, he would have used it to observe the faint nebulae if it had been in full working order. As with his previous projects, Franks went about tracking down the nebulae with gusto, his notebook brimming with observations. The result was a description of 44 objects, which were presented in a paper in Popular Astronomy.

Franks' last major project was also on the nebulae, this time a visual survey of the dark nebulae, stimulated by the recent appearance of E.E. Barnard’s Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way. The project, again encouraged by Fr. Hagen, was carried out in late 1929. The last observation was made on 1929 December 1, of B 227 in Orion, and his manuscript of the paper dispatched on the same day. Out of Barnard’s 346 catalogued dark nebulae, he was able to locate about 120 using the Cooke refractor and the results were published the following year in Monthly Notices of the RAS, this being his final publication.

During the project, Franks also spent some time searching for “Baxendell’s Nebula”, a large and faint nebula observed by Joseph Baxendell (1815-1887) with his 6-inch refractor at Birkdale in 1880 September. Baxendell reported that it was located near M2 in Aquarius, about 75’ by 52’ in size, and similar in character to the 46

nebulosity in the Pleiades, but fainter. The object was listed as NGC 7088 in the New General Catalogue and was seen over the years by a number of other well-known observers including J.L.E. Dreyer, who found it without difficulty in a 10-inch refractor, Guillaume Bigourdan, Fr. Hagen, and Max Wolf of Heidelberg. Hagen drew Franks', and others, attention to the nebula in a note he wrote in Astronomiche Nachrichten, encourage observations. Initially Franks had trouble locating the nebula, then on 1929 October 6 he found it: “On careful attention there does seem to be a slight difference in density between the neb[ula] and surrounding starry zones”. Fr. Hagen reported Franks' positive observation along with another one made by Fr. O’Connor of Stonyhurst College with the 15-inch (38 cm) refractor.

Whilst these visual confirmations were all well and good, the embarrassing truth was emerging that long exposure photographs of the region showed no nebulosity whatsoever, earning it the sobriquet Baxendell's Unphotographable Nebula. Hagen argued that it was impossible for all the visual observers to be mistaken and therefore the problem must lie with the photographic process. It is now accepted that the object isn't real and that visual sightings of it were due reflections of the nearby bright globular cluster M2.

The final years Although Franks continued to observe after the completion of his work on nebulae, it was much less systematic than previously as the frailties of increasing age became manifest. Working alone was becoming more of a challenge, but he did receive regular assistance in the observatory from a person referred to on the notebooks as “Hubert”, especially when the 24-inch reflector was used (58). Most of the notebook entries between 1930 and 1935 were in connation with visitors to the observatory, meteorological events and other news items, such as the dismantling of the Bush telescope described previously. He also gave talks to various groups in the East Grinstead area.

Franks used to cycle from his home to Brockhurst every day and was a familiar figure in the district. In 1933 September, whilst walking, he was knocked down by a cyclist, resulting in a lacerated left arm and a bruised right arm and shoulder. This put him out of action for a month. The following year, 1934 October, he was again taken ill and laid up for another month.

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Franks' last notebook entry was on 1935 June 7, recording an exceptionally heavy rainfall. A few days later a cycling accident befell him from which he never recovered, passing away on June 19 in his eighty-fifth year. It was shortly after this, of course, that Patrick Moore was invited to take change of showing visitors to Brockhurst objects through the telescope.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Richard Baum for his great kindness and generosity in passing Franks' notebooks to me and for encouraging this research. Richard Pearson has been most generous in allowing me access to his important research on T.W. Bush, as well as giving me permission to reproduce some of the photographs of the Brockhurst Observatory and the Bush telescope. Martin Mobberley and Denis Buczynski provided helpful information about Franks' work and notebooks, including scans of some of these documents. I am grateful to Sue Coppin of the University of Adelaide Archives for permission to use the photograph of Henry Brose. Officers at the Manuscripts and Special Collections at The University of Nottingham were helpful in providing details of items in their archives concerning Franks.

WILLIAM SADLER FRANKS [Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 96, p.291] Franks was born at Newark on 1851 April 26. During the early part of his life, he was occupied in his father's business at Leicester, but lie soon exhibited a preference for pursuits of a mechanical and scientific nature. At first chemistry and electricity claimed his chief attention -, but a glance through a friend's telescope turned his thoughts towards astronomy, and it was not long before he had an instrument of his own, mounted in a small homemade observatory of the Berthon type.

After satisfying his curiosity by a little general stargazing, Franks soon settled down to systematic work, choosing the study of star colors as his line of research. The first fruits of this work took the form of a “Catalogue of the Colors of 3,890 Stars," which was communicated to the Society on his behalf in 1878 by the Rev. T. W. 'Webb. His interest in this branch of work 48

persisted throughout his life, though he was otherwise occupied for a great part of his observing career. He directed the Star-Color Section of the Liverpool Astronomical society and, later, that of the British Astronomical Association. He contributed many papers on the subject to the Monthly Notices, and as recently as 1921 undertook a revision of the colors of some 6000 stars at the request of the late father Hagen, who published them in a volume of the Specola Vaticana in 1923.

He acquired great skill in the estimation of star colors, and his results, attained by purely visual means with a small telescope, have been found to be in quite remarkable agreement with those derived more recently by measurements of intensity distribution in photographic spectra.

In 1802 Franks joined the late Dr. Isaac Roberts (Shown here on the right) at Crowborough, and was there engaged in photographing nebula and star clusters with the 20-inch reflector, until the time of his employer's death in 1904.

In this work, he showed the same careful attention to detail as had characterised his previous visual observations. The applause, which always greeted the appearance of the Crowborough photographs on the screen at Burlington House, was often a virtual tribute to his personal skill and gave him much quiet satisfaction.

He left Crowborough in 1906 and went to live at Uxbridge for some years, during which time he had several small engagements connected with private observatories. He also assisted the late John Franklin Adams at Mervel Hill in the preparation of his star charts for publication.

From 1910 until the time of his death Franks was in charge: of Mr. Frederick J. Hanbury*s observatory at East Grinstead. Here the chief instrument was a 6-inch equatorial refractor by Cooke, and with it, he made, during seven years, a series of micrometrical measures of wide double stars. These were published in various papers communicated to the Society in the years 1914-1920. In 1923, the Council awarded to him the Jackson-Gilt medal of the moiety for his work on the colors of the stars. He was by this time in his seventysecond year, hut he continued to contribute occasionally to the Monthly Notices, his last paper, on Bernard's marl: nebulae, being published in 1930 January, when he was seventy-eight.

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Franks, in whose character modesty was charmingly blended with enthusiasm, was probably little known to the present generation of astronomers, but there was a time when his diminutive,., almost gnome-like figure was often seen at the meetings of the Society, and those who were privileged to know him will retain a happy recollection of his delightful personality.

He died on 1935 June 19, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, leaving a widow, one son and two daughters. He was elected a Fellow of the Society on 1880 January 9th.

NEWARK’S BRILLIANT ASTRONOMER: DEATH OF W S FRANKS [The Newark Herald, Saturday July 13, 1935] The death has taken place at East Grinstead of a distinguished Newarker, Mr. W. S. Franks, Who was a cousin of Mr. A. J. Franks.

The East Grinstead Observer in the course of its obituary notice says, "The news came as a great shock to the town, where he was well known and highly esteemed. He had been in indifferent health for some but the end was by no means expected.

Mr. Franks took a turn for the worse on Saturday and passed away five days later. The gentleman was 84 years of age, but almost until the end, he was active and recently seen in the town. For 25 years, he was in charge of the observatory and meteorological instruments belonging to Mr. F. J, Hanbury at Brockhurst, East Grinstead. He had a brilliant mind and his knowledge of astronomy was in exhaustive.

To East Grinstead people he will perhaps be best remembered for the many delightful lectures he gave during the winter evenings over a long period of years and to the readers of this paper his name was a familiar one. His monthly letters in these columns on the weather were always read with great interest. Mr. Franks also sent each week a meteorological summary.

The following letter from a correspondent appeared in the "Times":— "William Sadler Franks was born at Newark, Nottinghamshire on April 26th, 1851. During his early years, he lived in Leicester, except for a 50

year in the United States of America (1868-69). He early developed a taste for mechanical and scientific pursuits.

"Quite by chance he looked through a friend's telescope (a fairly powerful one) at the heavens, and from that time onward he turned his attention towards astronomy. The longing thus created was not satisfied except by the acquisition of a telescope for his own use; but there was nowhere to have it except on the roof of his father's house.

A wooden platform overcame that difficulty—to be followed later by a homemade "Bertnon' observatory. His first piece of systematic work was a ''Catalogue of the Colors of 3,890 Stars, which was presented to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878 by the late Prebendary Webb on behalf of the author. This was largely prompted by the gifted author of 'Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes,'' to whose kindly advice Mr. Franks was much indebted. He was elected a Fellow of the R.A.S. in January 1880. Besides the routine observing work. Mr. Franks was a frequent contributor to the 'English Mechanic' and other miscellaneous publications. About that time, he was an active member of the Liverpool Astronomical Society and director of its Star Color Section. He also was an original member of the British Astronomical Association, which practically superseded the waning L.A.S., taking, over the charge of the Star Color Section.

"In 1892 Mr. Franks joined the late Dr. Isaac Roberts at Crowborough, and was engaged in photographing nebulae and star clusters with the 22-inch reflector, until the time of Dr Roberts' death in 1904.�

Isaac Roberts (27 January 1829 - 17 July 1904) was a Welsh engineer and businessperson best known for his work as an amateur astronomer, pioneering the field of astrophotography of nebulae. He was a member of the Liverpool Astronomical Society in England and was a fellow of the Royal Geological Society. Roberts was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1895.

In 1878, Roberts had a 7-inch refractor at his home in Rock Ferry, Birkenhead. Although at the time he used this for visual observation, he began to explore stellar photography, his forte, a few years later.

In 1883, Roberts began experimenting with astrophotography. He first used portrait lenses with apertures varying from to 8 inches.

Roberts was pleased with the results, and ordered a reflecting telescope with a silver-on-glass mirror of 20-inch diameter (100-inch focal length) from Howard Grubb and by 1885 he had built 51

observatory building to house it. He mounted photographic plates directly at the prime focus in order to avoid the loss of light that would occur from using a second mirror. This allowed him to make significant progress in the then-developing field of astrophotography.

In 1886 Roberts displayed his first photographs at the Royal Astronomical Society at Liverpool, which he was president. These images showed, for the first time, "the vast extensions of nebulosity in the Pleiades and Orion.

Roberts died suddenly in Crowborough, Sussex, England in 1904 (he was 75 years old).

“He left Crowborough in 1906 and went to live at Uxbridge for several years and, in the absence of regular employment, he had various small engagements connected with private observatories—several months in London, Guernsey and elsewhere. Occasionally he assisted the late John Franklin Adams at Mervil Hill, in preparing his Star Charts for publication. Prom 1910 onwards. Franks was in charge of the Brockhurst Observatory, East Grinstead, belonging to Mr. Frederick J. Hanbury, which was equipped with a fine 6-inch Cooke equatorial and small transit instrument by Troughton and Simms. Here micrometrical measures of wide double stars occupied some seven years work, the results being published in annual reports in 'Monthly Notices,' 1914 -1920.

“Afterwards he undertook the revision of the colors of some 6000 stars at the request of the late Father S.J. Hagan who published them in a volume of the 'Specola Vaticana' in 1923. In the same year, Frank's was awarded the Jackson-Guilt Medal by the Council of the R.A.S. at the June meeting.

Since then a catalogue of the mean colors of 205 red stars was published in 'Monthly Notices,' November, 1924; observations of Herschel's Nebulous Regions appeared in 'Popular Astronomy' (U.S.A.), October, 1928, and visual observations of Bernard's Dark Nebulae were published in "Monthly Notices,' January 1930.

Meteorological observations have been taken daily at the Brockhurst Observatory since January, 1912, the rainfall statistics being duly forwarded to the Meteorological Office each year, and a weekly summary sent to a local newspaper. Frequent letters from Mr. Franks on current astronomical topics have been published, and 52

occasionally papers to the R.A.S. various volumes of the Notices' from 1880 onwards.�

W.S.Frank's 1851-1935 Images.

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William Sadler Frank's home in East Grinstead 56

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Eclipse of the Sun observed by Patrick Moore at

Brockhurst 19 June 1936

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3. THE BROCKHURST OBSERVATORY English Heritage Listed Status

1. Grade: II* 2. Date first registered: 01-Dec-1988 HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT By 1875 (OS) Ashurst Lodge was situated within substantial pleasure grounds which extended to the south-west of the house along the south-west facing slopes. By 1899 (OS) the name of the house had been changed to Brockhurst.

In 1908, Frederick J Hanbury (1851-1935) bought the estate, and in the following two decades, he laid out the gardens for which the site was famous. The Hanburys were well known as a family of gardeners, Frederick Hanbury's cousin being Sir Thomas Hanbury (1832-1907) who laid out the gardens at La Mortola, near Ventimiglia in Liguria, northern Italy and in 1903 bought and presented the 60 acre (c 24ha) estate at Wisley, Surrey (qv) to the Royal Horticultural Society. Frederick Hanbury received a number of semi-hardy plants from La Mortola which he attempted to grow at Brockhurst with varying success (JRHS 1917). A renowned botanist in his own right he was active for many years in botanical collecting.

Hanbury carried out an extensive scheme of planting and landscaping during his ownership of the Brockhurst estate. In 1910, he had already embarked on the construction of a rock garden using stone brought in from a local source. When digging planting holes for a belt of rhododendron, he accidentally discovered the outcrop of Tunbridge Wells sandstone which lay close below the surface which he described as 'a fine mass of solid rock, some 30ft [c 9m] thick' (The Garden 1924). This he uncovered, quarried, and built up with the help of the head gardener, Thomas Matthews, to form a great ravine and rockery. The feature was then planted with a wide range of species, both exotics and natives. The water from a number of springs was harnessed to feed a variety of waterworks. A moraine, based on a succession of cement tanks with a complex underground watering system, was made with advice from E A Bowles (18651954) and Reginald Farrer (1880-1920). Farrer was responsible for the construction of the famous rockery at St John's College, Oxford 62

(qv) and author of the encyclopedia, The English Rock garden, published in 1919.

The estate was split up in 1954. A number of new houses have been built in the grounds, destroying parts of Hanbury's layout such as the heath garden, which had occupied land to the south of the house. The rock garden for which Hanbury's scheme was renowned, survives however within the gardens to Barton Pines, a house built in the 1950s. After moving to Barton Pines in 1954, Mr. and Mrs. Eric Crundall rediscovered, replanted and maintained Hanbury's rock garden over the next forty years. The site is in private divided ownership (1999).

SITE DESCRIPTION LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING Brockhurst lies c 1.5 km southeast of East Grinstead on the south side of the Lewes Road, the A22 that links East Grinstead with Forest Row. The topography is gently undulating with a downward slope towards the south and southwest, and the site is protected to the east and northeast by rising ground. From the higher points of the estate, there are distant views to the Ashdown Forest. The site of the rock garden is a rounded hill with a steep escarpment towards the northwest. Brockhurst house stands close to the Lewes Road, which forms the northeast boundary of the site, and is screened, from the road by a large, shrub-planted mound. On all other boundaries, the site adjoins farmland.

The underlying geology of the site, which was exploited by Hanbury, is the Lower Tunbridge Wells sandstone, a solid rock found at a shallow depth beneath the soils.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The main drive which enters at the lodge on the Lewes Road 130m southeast of Brockhurst, was probably modified by Hanbury c1910 (OS). Cut into the slope and lined by a stone-faced retaining wall, it curves round from Lewes Road to the south-west and turns northwest before finally turning northeast to approach the west of the house. This approach gives fine views out to the south and west while the house remains hidden from view. Hanbury's improvements seem to have been based on the route of an earlier caniage drive along which areas of heather planting were established in c1877. By 63

Hanbury's time, it formed a dense bank, noted as colorful in autumn (JRHS 1917).

PRINCIPAL BUILDING Brockhurst House is Arts and Crafts in style and would appear to have been refurbished by Hanbury after he purchased the property.

The original property was L-shaped, with the entrance in the southeast angle. Although a major portion of the house was demolished in the 1950s, the garden front of the house is relatively intact and retains a strong relationship to the gardens.

A number of other properties have been built within the grounds since the estate was divided in 1954.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS On the west side of the house are a series of terraces, constructed in 1911. From the terraces, a flight of steps leads onto a lawn and rock garden, and then down to the highest of the string of four spring-fed ponds set in pleasure grounds, planted with species of rhododendron. Hanbury planted the banks of the ponds with water plants.

To the north-west of the house is a pinetum, which was severely damaged in the 1987 storm but occasional unusual trees, survive (Inspector's Report 1998). Beyond the pinetum is the rock garden for which the gardens were particularly famous; this is now part of the grounds of Barton Pines. The rock garden covers 1.6 ha of what was originally a sloping meadow called 'Banky Meadow'. Its construction and planting are fully described in numerous articles from the 1910s and 1920s. A natural spring was channeled to feed a series of miniature waterfalls and pools within the rock garden, issuing eventually into the head of the upper pond. A central winding path, some 180m long leads through the rock garden to a great chasm.

This is flanked on either side by steps at intervals leading to paths, which run at a higher level along the tops of the banks. Halfway along the central path is an open, boggy area for marsh plants, providing a contrast with the rock faces. In the main chasm is a cave, long and winding with a number of branches, which was formed from the extraction of additional stone for the garden. Another feature of this chasm is a deep, still pool with a dripping well at one end with long flights of steps leading up to a walk along the highest point of the 64

garden. Following the break-up of the estate in the 1950s, Barton Pines was built on a site immediately to the south of the Lewes Road, overlooking the rock garden, but placed to relate directly to it.

To the north-west of the rock garden is a further area of pinetum, planted with redwoods and pines, which led out into the Wilderness, an area of pleasure grounds laid out along a large stream with woodland plants and moisture-loving plants. Hanbury used the stream to feed a pumping house and reservoir a quarter of a mile away for use in the house, gardens and laundry. The Wilderness and pumping house have not survived.

There was also an Observatory; a well-equipped astronomical and meteorological station situated on the highest point of the property.

This was surrounded by a heath garden. Neither of these two features remain.

PARK The gardens sit in the remnants of a park developed between 1875 and 1899 (OS), incorporating the easternmost of the string of four ponds which lay directly to the west of the house in a line from northeast to south-west. By 1899 (OS) the park had reached its greatest extent, lying northwest of the house and extending almost to the outskirts of East Grinstead. By the 1930s, a number of large residences in parkland settings had been built on the outskirts of East Grinstead; Brockhurst is among these, but in contrast to the others, the garden grounds and woodland gardens were a major feature at Brockhurst.

REFERENCES J Roy Horticult SocXLII, parts II and III (1917), pp 271-81 Country Life, 54 (4 August 1923), pp148-54 The Garden, (16 February 1924), pp 82-6 The Brockhurst Gardens, A paradise of dainty devices' The Times, 2 June 1925 The Studio, (1926-7) Lady Rockley, Historic Gardens of England (1938), pp254-5 Inspector's Report: Brockhurst, English Heritage 1988) Maps OS 6" to 1 mile: 1 1st edition surveyed 1875 2nd edition published 1899 3rd edition published 1910 Description written: May 1992 Register Inspector: HJ Amended: November 1999 (KC); December (CAA) Edited: December 2003 National Grid Reference: TQ 406

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BROCKHURST: A SMALL TWENTIETH-CENTURY OBSERVATORY Brockhurst Observatory, at East Grinstead in Sussex, cannot claim to have been a major institution. Its largest telescope was a Bush 24inch reflector, but much of the work was carried out with a 6 1/8 inch refractor, and by one man, William Sadler Franks (18511935). Yet some useful results came from it, and it deserves to be remembered. The location 51° 7’ 27” N. 2° 27 E. F.J. Hanbury, senior partner in the famous firm of Allan and Hanbury, set it up in the first decade of the twentieth century. Hanbury was very wealthy, and bought a lovely old house on the boundary between East Grinstead and the village of Ashurst Wood in West Sussex. He was a noted horticulturalist, and specialised in orchids; his orchid-houses were world famous, and were tended by a large staff. The Observatory was set up in the grounds, and was attractive; there was one main building, with a dome for the refractor as well as a transit instrument and an observing room. The Cooke telescope was optically excellent, with a conventional falling-weights drive; there was an accurate clock, and a small library.

As observer, Hanbury engaged W.S. Franks, who had been born in Newark on 26 April 1851 and had become an enthusiastic astronomer, though he never attended University. He specialised in observations of star colors, and his first major contribution was “Catalogue of the Colours of 3,890 Stars”, communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878 by Rev. T. W. Webb.

Subsequently he became director of the Star Colours Section of the Liverpool Astronomical Society (then a national rather than a local organization). The Liverpool society collapsed, and was to all intents and purposes succeeded by the British Astronomical Association, founded in 1890. Franks joined the BAA in 1891, and directed its Star Color Section for some years. In view of the small telescopes involved (many of them refractors) the estimates were surprisingly accurate, and several lists were issued, though with the rise of spectroscopy the Section faded away. Franks retained his interest in the subject, and in 1921 undertook a revision of the colors of 6,000 stars at the request of the Vatican Observatory. Meanwhile he had spent some time as assistant to Isaac Roberts at a private observatory in Crowborough in Sussex (1892-1904). He assisted 66

John Franklin-Adams in the preparation of the famous star charts and in 1910 accepted Hanbury’s invitation to take charge at the Brockhurst Observatory.

Franks made his own programme of observations – mainly concerned with star colors; various papers were published, and in 1923, the Royal Astronomical Society Council awarded him the Jackson-Gilt medal. Otherwise, Frank’s duties were more or less limited to making the telescopes available to Hanbury’s houseguests, of which there were many. The 24-inch Bush reflector was housed in a separate observatory, but was always the secondary instrument, and was taken down in 1930.

The work at Brockhurst was not confined to star colors; Franks was concerned largely with micrometrical measurements of double stars, and indeed this was probably the most important contribution.

Between 1914 and 1920, in particular, thousands of measurements were made. Neither was photography neglected, and in fact, Franks’ last paper, published in 1930, dealt with Barnard’s dark nebulae.

Franks died on 19 June 1935, at the age of eighty-five. I had been observing with him, and very much to my surprise, Hanbury invited me to take charge of the Observatory. Despite my tender years (I was aged fourteen) I hope that I carried out my duties efficiently; at any rate, Hanbury seemed to think so, and I was able to use the Cooke refractor to contribute to the lunar and planetary sections of the BAA. Hanbury died in early 1939, and the Observatory was dismantled; the Cooke refractor was sold for £40 – a sum that was, to my great regret, out of my range. Franks observing books were handed over to me at the request of his relations. I correlated them and handed them over to the BAA. Trees now grow over the site of the Brockhurst Observatory, but it played a role, albeit a minor one and I at least will remember it with great affection.

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Images of the Brockhurst Observatory

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Above Patrick Moore at the Brockhurst observatory age 14, and below Patrick aged about 17.

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Brockhurst, East Grinstead. This map shows the site of the observatory and the location where Patrick Moore lived at the time he befriended W S Frank's, and later became Observatory Director.

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4. Sir Patrick Moore 1923 - 2012 Second Director of the Brockhurst Observatory ABSTRACT: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE wearing an RAF blazer (c) 2013 Martin Mobberley.

Patrick usually said that his earliest recollection was of the General Strike of 1926, when he was three and the family lived in Bognor. He distinctly remembered his parents driving him (they had a car in 1926?) into Bognor town to buy him a new pair of shoes during the strike, since Bognor, as a non-union town, was not involved. It had not then become Bognor Regis.

Patrick’s mother, when aged 92, described the young Patrick in a 1978 newspaper interview thus: “He was the untidiest, oddest little devil as a boy and he hasn’t changed. Life with him is a bit strange but not bad when you stop wondering about what could happen next.” For Patrick’s sixth birthday, in March 1929, he wanted a cuckoo clock, not a telescope, and his mother drove him all the way from Bognor to London’s Oxford Street to choose one. It would never keep particularly good time (Patrick would often say “that damn bird’s a liar”) but he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he could never write a book without hearing it’s tick-tock in the background.

As an aside to all this, at Patrick’s 83rd birthday party I met Patrick’s cousin (his mother’s sister’s daughter Eileen Tanner), who was 3 years older than Patrick. I asked her what she remembered of the boy Patrick and she replied, “He was always coming out with long words and scientific stuff. We never understood what he was talking about as a child and still don’t!”

On one particularly rainy day in 1929, the year the family had moved to live next to his grandmother at East Grinstead, Patrick’s mother introduced her 6 year old son to a small book entitled The Story of the Solar System by G.F. Chambers (published in 1898). This book fired Patrick’s imagination and inspired him to “devour its companion volume straight away” and the rest, as they say, is history! The companion volume was entitled The Story of the Stars. Shortly after arriving at East Grinstead, in the loft in Patrick’s grandmother’s house, his late grandfather Julius’ 1892 Remington typewriter was unearthed. This find would shape Patrick’s destiny.

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Patrick Moore age 3 (1926).

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It was obvious from an early age that Patrick was keen on writing and typing, as well as playing the piano. Aged seven he learned to type (using the middle finger of each hand - a technique that he used throughout his life) with that 1892 Remington typewriter. In 1931, his father bought him a second hand (1908 vintage) Woodstock 5 typewriter, which he still used well into the twenty-first century! His father bought him a solid writing desk too, for his eighth birthday present. As with the typewriter, that desk would still be the one that Patrick was using well into his eighties.

Patrick often said that his ‘First World War hero’ father was everything he was not: “athletic, practically minded and very strong, and he would have liked a son who was the same... but he got me!”

Unlike Patrick’s Mother, his Father had: At the age of seven Patrick read his first science fiction novel in an old 1908 copy of me magazine for boys called Young England. There was a story in the magazine to} me journalist and author Fenton Ash (real name Frank Atkins) entitled A Son of lime Sian, in which two young boys travelled to Mars. Patrick was really hooked on Space Travel from that moment on. He bought a star map, soon acquired a small pair of binoculars (on loan) and started devouring any space fiction he could find, and actually tried writing his first astronomy book aged eight. He told his relatives he was "Going to write an astronomy book in simple language for the young so that mother can understand it too!” However, at only eight, even Patrick never managed to complete the work.

The 7-year old Patrick, for 1 year, had attended the prestigious Dulwich preparatory school in south London (a school well known to his mother’s side of the family and only a stone’s throw from his grandparents’ home). Unfortunately, health problems (a “silly crooked heart - the family curse”, according to Patrick) and his dislike of school life resulted in Patrick’s parents having him privately tutored at home. In later years, after Patrick’s mother had died, he constantly talked about how he was “a crock” as a child: too unwell to go to school. However, this author remembers one press interview with his mother when she stated that it was amazing to see him so full of energy on TV, because “as a child he was thoroughly lazy... he only put up with going to school for one year.” Anyone who knew Patrick would tell you that he never, EVER, did anything that he did not want to: he must surely have been like that as a child too! Indeed, a picture in the hallway of his Selsey home 'Farthings’ showed a very stubborn 73

looking young master Moore. Although Patrick would later be able to sketch the Moon and planets well through his telescopes, one of his worst childhood subjects was art (despite his mother’s sketching and painting skills), while his best natural talent was for music.

Coincidentally he had an art teacher called Mr Moore, who one day asked his young pupils to “sketch a towel draped over a chair”.

Patrick mis-heard him and thought he had asked them to “sketch a cow draped over a chair”. The resulting sketch was one that his mother treasured for many years. After some abortive attempts to teach Patrick to draw, and to paint, the art teacher eventually told Mrs Moore “your son tries hard but I think he is more of a musician than an artist”. Patrick was allowed to miss art lessons and practice his piano work instead. Once a week there was an elementary science lesson and Patrick vividly recalled being told of the discovery of the ninth planet Pluto by the science teacher. Half a century later, Patrick would collaborate with the discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, on the story behind that piece of celestial detective work.

From the age of eight, Patrick was deemed too unwell to attend a preparatory school and so a tutor was found. That tutor, who along with Patrick’s mother taught him for the next 7 years, was the Reverend John Missen (born in 1889) of Coleman’s Hatch, Hartfield, in East Sussex. He was the vicar of Coleman’s Hatch for half a 74

century. Patrick often said that if not for the teachings of John Missen he would never have achieved anything in life. In 1974, the Reverend Missen described the young Patrick as “Never depressed and always faithful to his friends”. He also said, “If Patrick didn’t know any particular subject well he’d play the fool and he did it so well you realised he was certainly not a fool whatever else he was!”

Just before Patrick’s ninth birthday he hand typed a copy of the astronomer W.H. Pickering’s 1907 book about the Moon {The Place of Origin of the Moon), almost 60,000 words of it, from a library book acquired for him by Major Arthur Everard Levin of the British Astronomical Association (BAA). Major Levin was the BAA President from 1930-1932 and, remarkably, lived at Patrick’s future village destination of Selsey, in the same street where Patrick would eventually live! By another fortunate coincidence, he was also a military acquaintance and a friend of Patrick’s father. Patrick performed this marathon typing exercise because there was no way he could afford to buy the book and because the loan, from the Royal Astronomical Society Library, expired in 1 month! It seemed destined for Patrick to become a Moon fanatic, Moon book author and manic typist from that moment on; and so it proved. Patrick’s 1908 Woodstock and, later, his 1911 Underwood (for use during Woodstock) would serve him well for the next 80 years! Patrick did not own a telescope at age nine but he did have his good pair of binoculars, which were regular, pointed at the night sky. Encouraged by a copy of Annie and Walter Maunder'- "book ‘The Heavens and their story’, Patrick was soon becoming very familiar with the constellations. Astronomy and music seemed to have an equal fascination for Patrick in those early years and he taught himself to read and write music fluently aged nine, and was composing whole pieces only 2 years later!

Patrick claims to have observed the celebrated 1933 White Spot on Saturn (discovered by the stage and screen comedian Will Hay), although he did not acquire a telescope until 1934, so he must have seen it through the local Hanbury refractor (which I mention a bit further on). Strangely, though, in Guide to the Planets, Patrick claims he did see the White Spot with his own telescope. In addition, I have studied the local Hanbury Observatory sketches kept by W.S. Franks (much more on him later) who was an avid observer and, while there are sketches of Saturn in his logbook, there is just one of Saturn in 1933, made on August 9th at 10 p.m.; that drawing does not show 75

the famous White Spot. This is not the first time some of Patrick’s claims have failed to stack up, chronologically or otherwise!

Sometime later, on a trip to London to see his maternal grandparents in 1933, Patrick spotted an antique astronomical orrery for the bargain price of 30 shillings, on sale in London’s Caledonian market.

With money from his parents, he purchased the orrery and would keep it in his study for the rest of his life. An orrery is a clockwork model of the solar system in which the planets rotate around the Sun at the correct relative speeds. However, 1933 was also a year of great sadness for Patrick because the family cat, Ptolemy, contracted cat flu and died. The young Patrick was totally distraught as of their two cats, Ginger and Ptolemy, it was always the pitch black Ptolemy that followed the budding astronomer everywhere he went, whether it was in the daytime, or at night to learn some more constellations.

Ginger survived, but it took Patrick many months to overcome Ptolemy’s demise. Seventy years later another jet-black cat, literally identical in appearance, took up residence in Patrick’s home at the other end of his life. The octogenarian Patrick would name the new moggie Ptolemy too, as it was, in every respect, spookily identical to his long lost childhood friend. That second Ptolemy would lie, faithfully, on Patrick’s bed, when he died, on December 9th 2012.

A couple of years after the death of the original Ptolemy a feral cat gave birth to four kittens under the Moore’s East Grinstead garden shed. Three of the kittens were given good homes but the fourth, named Rufus, made it clear that it was staying with Patrick and his parents. Rufus would outlive Ginger and survive for 20 years, right through the War years and almost up to the point where Patrick would become a book author.

Patrick applied to join the prestigious British Astronomical Association in 1934 when (like this author, some 35 years later) he was only 11 years old. At the time of his application, the BAA had a mere 830 members and only 570 of them were based in England.

The official procedure was that two people of good character, or established BAA members, proposed the new member and, if the council was happy, the member was duly elected. Patrick managed to enlist the help of the aforementioned family friend, the well-known amateur astronomer and British Army officer Major A.E. Levin, as his proposer and was duly elected to the association on November 28th 1934, aged 11 years and 8 months. Patrick’s seconder was J.T. Foxell, another BAA member. Foxell was a friend of Levin and an 76

expert on predicting lunar occultations of bright stars, such as Regulus and Antares, as well as calculating cometary orbits. Both Levin and Foxell were prominent figures in the BAA computing section where abilities in mathematics were, obviously, crucial.

Ironically, mathematics was always going to be Patrick’s weakest subject, with music his strongest and it is true to say that he was in awe of the BAA’s computing experts.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, by an extraordinary coincidence, while Patrick was a child in the East Grinstead of 1934, Major Levin lived in the same street (West Street in Selsey) where Patrick would take up residence from 1968; Levin owned a house called Elleray, located a stone’s throw from Patrick’s house ‘Farthings’ some 34 years in the future! Patrick told me that Levin’s West Street house number was 87, but confusingly that would now place it in the sea. When the average age of a BAA member was 50something, obtaining membership aged 11 was quite an achievement. In the decades to come though Patrick would, singlehandedly, reduce the average age of the BAA’s membership considerably, simply by attracting his many fans to join up. In 1934, even asking to join the BAA at the age of 11 was highly unusual.

However, Major Levin had been the President of the Association 2 years earlier, as well as being the Computing Section Director, and so with him and Foxell as proposer and seconder Patrick’s election was never in any doubt. Two weeks after Patrick was officially elected to the BAA he made a note in his ‘Brockhurst Observatory’ observing log book (whose name I will explain shortly) stating that on December 13th 1934 he had been officially told he was now an elected BAA member.

Major Levin owned a 6-inch refractor at his home in Selsey and knew the Moore’s neighbours, the Hanbury's, owners of another quality 6inch refractor; we will learn more about them soon. In those days, and throughout the twentieth century, it was the custom for the BAA President to offer to shake the hand of any newly elected member if they were present at a London meeting. Patrick claimed that, shortly after being elected, he was taken to a BAA meeting and shook the hand of the President (1934-1936) Sir Harold Spencer Jones, who was also the Astronomer Royal at the time. As the BAA was mainly an association of elderly bearded military men, doctors, or members of the clergy, it must have been an unusual sight to see an 11-yearold boy shaking the President’s hand.

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The 11-year-old Patrick also decided it was time to invest in a telescope of his own, but as a child, a 6-inch refractor was clearly out of the question. On a trip to London in 1934, accompanied by his mother, he acquired a good quality 3 inch refractor for me sum :£7-10 shillings (£7.50 in today’s money) from Broadhurst Clarkson & Fuller (BC&F); they were based at 63 Faningdon Road in London at the end of the twentieth century and in Lingfield, Surrey today. This was to be the only telescope Patrick owned until 1950. Steavenson had been the BAA President from 1926 to 1928, the period including the UK total solar eclipse of 1927. He was the youngest ever BAA President and became a President of the Royal Astronomical Society too. When the stage and screen comedian Will Hay had discovered the White Spot on Saturn from his south London address of 45, The Chase, Norbury, a year earlier, Steavenson, a stone’s throw away at 70 Idmiston Road, West Norwood, had been the first person Hay phoned. Remarkably, when the 11-year-old Patrick’s parents asked Steavenson’s advice on a telescope for Patrick, Steavenson actually travelled the short distance from West Norwood to East Grinstead to meet Patrick, and he recommended the 3-inch refractor from Broadhurst Clarkson. Although £7.50 might not seem much these days, it was, in fact, a substantial sum for an 11 year old in 1934, equivalent to 2 weeks wages for a working man. Almost 40 years later BC&F would supply Patrick with the mounting and the rotating top for his largest telescope. In passing, it is worth noting that Patrick’s observing logs always refer to that 3-inch refractor as a 3Vs inch refractor.

The new telescope, with its three-foot focal length (roughly f/12).was used heavily by the young Master Moore. However, as with so many telescope purchases there was, initially, a fly in the ointment. The instrument was supplied with a shaky tabletop ‘pillar and claw’ mounting which, according to Patrick, was ‘as stable as a blancmange’. Patrick’s parents purchased a solid wooden extendable tripod, on which to re-mount the instrument, for 30 shillings (£1.50).

Who knows, if not for that extra refinement the young boy, whose name became synonymous with astronomy, might not have acquired the patience to continue with his hobby and the whole future of astronomy might have been changed forever? Although Steavenson, who was blind in one eye, was never a household name in the UK, in 1934 he had contact with two household names: the 45-year-old Will Hay, who was just approaching his peak years of fame, and the 11year-old Patrick, whose fame would start 23 years in the future. In 78

later years, Patrick would say that Dr W.H. Steavenson was the man he had respected most in his early years in the BAA. A number of people have told me that, when answering questions from audiences, Patrick has occasionally claimed he observed with Will Hay, as a young BAA member, at Hay’s Norbury address, where Hay lived from 1927 to 1934. This could only have been made when Patrick was 11, as Hay had separated from his wife Gladys by 1935 and then moved to Hendon. However, when I have tried to clarify Patrick’s encounters with Hay and his claim to have observed with him he just used to say, “Yes, I knew Hay, as an astronomer” and trying to get any further would lead to him stonewalling. As we shall see, at various points in this book, investigating the stories about people who Patrick claimed to have known in his early life often leads to some very murky waters indeed.

By a lucky coincidence Patrick’s Glencathara home, in East Grinstead’s Worsted Lane, was directly opposite a large country estate, called the Brockhurst Estate, which featured a well equipped, privately owned, astronomical observatory. The Brockhurst Estate was owned by Frederick J. Hanbury FLS who was a millionaire associated with the pharmaceutical firm of Allen & Hanbury and also a Fellow of the Linnean Society (which specialised in promoting the biological sciences). F.J. Hanbury had joined his father Cornelius’ huge company in 1872 and by 1916 was the chairman. As Allen & Hanbury was the prime manufacturer of Cod Liver Oil and throat pastilles in Great Britain, it meant that F.J. Hanbury was a very wealthy man. However, his main interest in later life was in growing orchids (he was a world authority on them) and he was also a keen amateur astronomer and naturalist. Hanbury was so wealthy that he employed a local obsessive astronomer, called W.S. Franks, to run the small observatory full-time. To say that William Sadler Franks appeared unusual would be a gross understatement! He was decidedly eccentric, but he was also, without a doubt, the main astronomical influence on the 11-year-old Patrick.

The middle class Moore’s knew the extremely wealthy Hanburys and, one evening in early 1934, when the family was invited for a meal at the Brockhurst Estate, the young Patrick was introduced to William Sadler Franks. He knew that Patrick was applying for membership of the BAA and invited Patrick to join him in the Hanbury observatory, whenever he wished. Franks could never have dreamed that taking the young Patrick ‘under his wing’ and teaching him all he knew 79

about astronomy would not only inspire Patrick, but ultimately generations of astronomers, over the next 78 years and well into the twenty-first century!

The octogenarian who inspired Patrick in 1934 and 1935 was actually born in Newark, Nottinghamshire on April 24th 1851, 106 years to the day before Patrick broadcast the first ever Sky at Night programme live, on BBC1, on April 24th 1957. Actually, Patrick’s dates for both events, alternated between April 26th and 24th; but he was adamant that Franks was born on the same day and month as the first Sky at Night, which was Wednesday April 24th 1957. This was just 1 day after another favourite event in Patrick’s calendar, namely St George’s Day. As a proud Englishman Patrick always liked to celebrate that patriotic day and with the date occurring so close to the first ever Sky at Night broadcast it all seemed like destiny. W.S. Franks' first major astronomical paper was written in 1878, when he was 27, and entitled 'A Catalogue of the Colours of 3,890 Stars’, which he communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1878, via the legendary observer, the Rev. T.W. Webb. Franks became Director of the Star Colours Section of the Liverpool Astronomical Society, the most prestigious amateur astronomy club in the country at that time. In 1891 he joined the British Astronomical Association (the year after it was formed) and became its ‘Star Colours’ section director. He held the post for 3 years until he was succeeded by G.F. Chambers, the man whose 1898 book would be purchased by Patrick’s mother and ultimately inspire the 6-year-old Patrick: it’s a small world indeed! Franks moved to Crowborough in Sussex in 1892, where he worked with the legendary astrophotographer Isaac Roberts until 1904. Roberts had a massive telescope (for its day) with a 20 inch (50 centimetres) mirror. After Roberts died, in 1904, Franks continued for another 2 years at Crowborough, then went to live in Uxbridge and, finally, in 1910 (aged 59) moved to F.J. Hanbury’s Brockhurst observatory at East Grinstead as the Observatory Director. This was still 24 years before he would meet the young Patrick at the same observatory. Francks purchased a house half a mile away, on the Lewes Road and named it ‘Starfield’ after Isaac Roberts Observatory.

Therefore, in 1934, the 83-year-old Franks took Patrick under his wing and the course of British amateur astronomy was changed forever. Throughout his life, Patrick would take many young astronomers under his wing too: many became leading amateur and professional observers. The Brockhurst Observatory was modest by 80

modern standards, but very well equipped by the standards of the day. Just prior to Patrick’s arrival it briefly featured a massive 24 inch (60 centimetres) reflector, but its main instrument was a fine Cooke 6Vs inch refractor (155 millimetres) of 82 inches (208 cm) focal length. Franks was a meticulous observer and a stickler for facts and calculated the observatory’s position as latitude 51° 7'27" N, longitude 2.27 s E, altitude 435 feet. As Patrick later mentioned, on numerous occasions, Franks was a familiar figure in East Grinstead and, almost every day, he could be seen cycling from his house to the observatory at Brockhurst. In Patrick’s oft used words “It is no disrespect to say that he looked remarkably like a garden gnome”.

He was less than 5 feet tall in Patrick’s estimate (Patrick recalled being a similar height to Franks when he was only aged 11) always wore a skullcap and had a white beard! Even up to the age of 83, he would regularly attend BAA meetings in London. Tragically, in early 1935, when he had known Patrick for barely a year, he suffered a bad cycling accident. Although the accident did not kill him, he was badly shaken and was never to recover. He died some months later on June 19th 1935. The 12-year-old Patrick was devastated. Not only had he enjoyed his evenings under the stars at Brockhurst, he had been a regular visitor to Franks’ home.

In 1936, the \ young Patrick won a staggering £87 on the Football Pools, equivalent to a win of ma>be 10.000 pounds these days! The family spent the winnings on a holiday in Belgium with £7 and 10 shillings being spent on a xylophone for Patrick and. surprisingly (to me at least) NOT on more astronomical equipment. Back in East Grinstead and taking a break from music, Patrick decided to put his own 3-inch refractor to good use and spent many evenings studying the Moon. In 1937, at the advanced age of 14, he proposed his first scientific paper, to be delivered to a BAA audience, entitled ‘Small Craterlcts in the Mare Crisium’. The Mare Crisium is a distinctive smooth circular lunar ‘sea’ easily visible in a small telescope. The BAA secretary (FJ. Sellers) wrote back to Patrick thanking him for his proposed paper and saying that he noted Patrick was 14 ‘although I suppose that doesn’t matter’. In later years, Patrick would say: “They did a double-take when a fourteen year old turned up to speak. They thought I was probably an old man”. Strangely, there is no account of Patrick actually delivering his talk in the BAA meeting reports of that era, although not everything was always recorded, especially if the meetings recorder missed a contributor’s name or if the Journal editor decided the contribution was relatively minor. There was certainly much interest in small Mare Crisium craterlets in that era 81

though. At the June 24th 1936 BAA meeting Mr Robert Barker had mentioned ‘Some small craters in the Mare Crisium, easily seen with a 3-inch telescope' and ‘it seemed curious that they had not been previously recorded’. Maybe Patrick’s proposed paper was inspired by those comments and the related BAA Lunar Memoir published in that year?

Despite the death of Franks all hope of using the Hanbury Observatory’s splendid Cooke refractor was not lost. Brockhurst’s owner, F.J. himself, was still alive (although also in his eighties) and still liked to show his visiting friends the stars, the planets and the Moon through his telescope, so he kept the observatory going.

However, at his age he was increasingly in need of a new ‘Observatory Director’. In 1937, Patrick was asked by the ageing Hanbury to take over this role. Patrick was not intended to carry out the relentless observing schedule of Franks (who was obsessed with estimating star colours, sketching planets and measuring double star separations), just to show Hanbury’s guests the best sights through the telescope, when the clouds parted. How many 14 year olds can boast of being an Observatory Director? Patrick put his access to Hanbury’s 6-inch refractor to good use and used it to observe the Moon, the planets and the bright comet discovered by Finsler in the same year. The telescope must have seemed enormous to the teenage Patrick. Unlike today’s compact German Equatorial Mountings, typically used for modern short-focus refractors, the 82inch focal length Brockhurst refractor was slung between the two tapering mahogany pillars of a huge English Equatorial mounting; one end of the mount was anchored into the observatory floor and the other was positioned well above head height. The late Franks himself had admitted (in the Monthly Notices of the RAS) that the Brockhurst refractor’s clock drive was ‘somewhat antiquated’ and ‘irregular in action’ but the telescope was blissfully equipped with enormous 20-inch (50 centimetres) diameter setting circles in R.A. and Dec., enabling an object’s position to be dialled up to an accuracy of 2 seconds in time and 10 arc seconds in declination. This setting circle accuracy proved to be a joy for the young Patrick, when he wanted to find new objects to observe. Patrick has mentioned in recent years that being an Observatory Director meant that his Woodstock typewriter was suddenly a lot busier, as the Hanbury Observatory received quite a lot of postal correspondence, both from amateur and professional astronomers. So his two-fingered teenage typing ability became even more frantic.

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In December 1937 the BAA Journal dropped through the Moore’s Glencathara letterbox and, on page 80, it contained an article that must surely have fascinated the young Patrick. In an article by H.P. Wilkins the discovery of a possible new lunar sea (or mare) was announced right on the very edge of the Moon. Due to the orbital characteristics of the Moon, which we shall learn more about later; Wilkins had been able to glimpse a feature normally beyond the Eastern (Classical orientation) limb, so not usually visible from the Earth. Wilkins named the feature Mare Xi A though it had actually been seen well before his observation, way back before 1906 in fact, by foreign observers). Patrick would glimpse this feature again in 1940 ir.d, when collaborating with Wilkins in earnest, after the war, in 1946. Wilkins would ultimately become the next mentor for Patrick. In later years Patrick would claim that he discovered both the Mare Orientale and the crater Einstein! In fact, Jrientale may have been independently discovered by Wilkins in 1937, and Wilkins may well have been the first British observer of the Mare, but Patrick’s claim to be Orientale’s discoverer was just a story that became exaggerated over many years. As we shall see, Patrick would become a fanatically keen observer of the feature, with Wilkins, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but nothing more; he certainly could not claim to have discovered it.

Extracts from Sir Patrick Moore's Autobiography 80 Not Out and the BBC Sky at Night website From 1953 onward, astronomy dominated my life, so I think I must backtrack a little to set the scene. Of course, it goes back to the time when I read that little book by G. F. Chambers, and I think I tackled it in the right way.

Photograph of 13-year-old Patrick Moore (1936).

I did some more reading, obtained a simple star map, and learned my way around the night sky, which is not difficult if you put 83

your mind to it; I made a pious resolve to learn one new constellation on every clear night.

Next, I borrowed a pair of binoculars, and investigated objects such as double stars and star clusters. By the time I was eleven, I had saved up enough money to buy a small telescope, and I had two slices of luck. One was to be elected a member of the British Astronomical Association; I well remember being taken to a meeting in London, at Sion College, and having the strange experience of walking up to be admitted by the President, at that time Sir Harold Spencer Jones, the Astronomer Royal. It never occurred to me that half a century later I would myself occupy the Presidential chair.

The other slice of luck was that I met W. S. Franks, a well-known astronomer who lived in East Grinstead and ran a private observatory owned by F. J. Hanbury, of the firm of Allen and Hanbury. Brockhurst Observatory was within a couple of hundred yards of my home, and was equipped with an excellent telescope - a 6-inch refractor. Franks took me under his wing, and taught me how to make astronomical observations. He was in his eighties, and just about five feet tall; he had a long white beard, and always wore a skullcap, so that he looked exactly like a gnome.

He was a most delightful man, and it came as a very nasty shock when he died suddenly following a road accident; a car knocked him off the bicycle that he rode every day between his home and the Observatory.

To my intense surprise, I was invited to take over and run the Observatory. For a fourteen-year-old this was a great opportunity, though I have to admit that my main duties were limited to showing astronomical objects to the Brockhurst houseguests (Hanbury was mainly interested in growing orchids!). I hope that I acquitted myself well, and of course, I had full use of the telescope. My first paper to the BAA was presented during this period; it dealt with features on the Moon, and was entitled 'Small Craters in the Mare Crisium’, based on my own work. I sent it in, and was notified by the Association’s Council that it had been accepted, but I felt bound to explain that I was not exactly elderly. I still have the reply, signed by the then secretary, F. J. Sellers: 'I note that you are only fourteen. I don’t see that that is relevant.’ I duly gave the paper, though I imagine that some of the members present at the meeting were distinctly surprised.

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In April 1957, I presented the very first Sky at Night programme. A comet ushered us in: Arend-Roland, which alas we will never see again because it has long since passed out of our range and is leaving the Solar System permanently. At that time, I had no idea how long the programme would survive, but I do sincerely believe that it has played a part in promoting science.

I became fascinated by astronomy at the age of six (in 1929!) when I picked up a small book belonging to my mother, who had more than a passing interest in the sky. Later I wrote books myself. It so happened that in 1957, Paul Johnstone, one of the BBC’s senior producers, came across Sun, Myths, and Men, dealing with various aspects of astronomy. Paul - who was not an astronomer but an archaeologist - had been looking out for someone to present a monthly astronomical programme, and he asked me to go and see him. After we had worked it out, the BBC said that they would put out the programme once every four weeks for three months, and see how it was received. Well - we are still going.

Many of the world's leading astronomers have joined me from time to time - such as Harlow Shapley, who first measured the size of the Milky Way galaxy, Carl Sagan, of Cosmos fame, Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discover of pulsars, Fred Hoyle, Harold Spencer Jones, Martin Ryle, Bart Bok - a long list, and also the astronauts, headed by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Over the years, we have covered every aspect of astronomy, and we do our best to be topical. For example, when the lovely Hale Bopp comet appeared in 1997, we did a special programme about it.

However, we are also very careful to vary the technical content of our programmes. Some are very basic, while others go into much more detail. This means that we have viewers of all ages, and there is, we hope, "something for everybody.” It is interesting to find that many professionals also watch us. Astronomy is such a vast subject that nobody can hope to cover it all. A researcher who is, for example, researching the spectra of stars many thousands of light years away may not necessarily know very much about the atmosphere of Mars!

There have been many ‘highlights'. One of the first came in 1959, when the Russians obtained the first pictures of the far side of the Moon, which is always turned away from the Earth. The extreme edge of the Earth-turned hemisphere is always very foreshortened, and my particular research was in mapping these difficult regions.

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When the soviets sent their probe Lunik 3 on a round trip, and obtained images of the unknown regions, they used my charts to link their pictures to the familiar face. Their results came through when I was actually presenting a live programme (everything was live in those days). Later we reported the first controlled lunar landing by an unmanned spacecraft, opening the way for the Apollo triumph of 1969.

We have visited most of the world's great observatories, some of which are truly amazing places, and which are by no means easy to reach. Atop Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, there are several major telescopes, and we have been there several times. In the early days of the observatory, we had to drive up to 14,000 feet, along a road the last part of which was ominously narrow, with a sheer drop to either side. We went to a Gold mine in the black hills of South Dakota, to visit a very curious observatory; it is deep below ground level, and the 'telescope' is a huge tank of cleaning fluid, designed to pick up special types of radiation from the Sun. We have also made long journeys to observe total eclipses of the Sun. Nothing can match the brilliance of a total eclipse. As the Moon, the pearly corona flashes into view, covers the brilliant Sun the sky darkens, and all of nature seems to come to a halt. In general, we have been successful, and one of my happiest memories is of the eclipse of 1998, which we saw from a ship, the Stella Solaris, in the Caribbean. We had to be in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, and we had a Greek Captain who got everything right. My birthday fell during that week, and I was given a deck party, which provided, for me at least, the perfect culmination of the trip.

We were less fortunate with the eclipse of 11 August 1999, which ought to have been seen from Cornwall. With lain Nicholson and Peter Cattermole and the Sky at Night team, we set up our station in Falmouth. The previous day was brilliantly clear, but at the time of the eclipse, we were not only clouded out, but also drenched with rain.

We sat under umbrellas saying things such as "Tut, tut!", "Dear me!", and "How annoying!� As far as England is concerned, we must now wait until 2090 for another opportunity.

I am often asked why The Sky at Night has lasted for so long, and will, we hope, last for a long time yet. There are, I think, several reasons. The most important is that the sky is all around us, and 86

surely, there can be nobody who can avoid taking at least a passing interest.

This has been particularly evident since the start of the Space Age, in October 1957. Before that, astronomy was always regarded as rather a remote subject, practised mainly by old men with long white beards sitting in lonely observatories through the nights, 'watching the stars'.

All this was swept away with the ascent of Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite. Almost overnight, astronomy became headline news, and as such, it has remained. Bear in mind, too, that astronomy is the basis of all timekeeping and navigation.

Secondly, astronomy is one of the few sciences in which the amateur can play a useful role. Amateurs carry out work which professionals have no time to do, have no wish to do, or cannot do. For example, amateurs have always been to the fore in discovering comets and novae, hunting for supernovae, and monitoring events happening on the planets.

Today, the amateur can be surprisingly well equipped, and there is full collaboration between amateurs and professionals. It is also true that amateurs know the skies much better than many of our most senior researchers, who depend entirely on complex electronic devices, and seldom look through their telescopes. Not long ago, I had a phone call from an eminent professional, who told me that he had identified a bright nova or exploding star. It turned out that he had made a completely independent discovery of the planet Saturn!

The third reason is that The Sky at Night is non- controversial, goes out late, is unlike any other regular programme, and has a faithful following. This means that as far as the BBC's planners are concerned, it is nobody's enemy.

I do have a tremendous correspondence, and I answer all the letters as soon as I can. Many enquiries come from young enthusiasts, and it does give me immense pleasure to go round and find well-known amateurs, and well-known professionals, who began by watching one of our programmes. My own research - mapping the Moon - now belongs to the past, and my role, if I have one, is to try to urge others to do things, which I could never do myself; whether or not I have succeeded must be left for others to judge.

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Appendix 1 | JOHN RUSSELL HIND John Russell Hind was born in Nottingham on 12 May 1823, the son of Mr. John Hind a lace manufacturer. John Russell Hind attended Nottingham Grammar School and by the age of sixteen was contributing astronomical notes to the Nottingham Journal and other newspapers.

Hind went to London at aged seventeen to work as a civil engineer for a Mr. Carpmael, but the lure of astronomy proved too much. He only remained in Mr. Carpmael's office a short time, and at the end of 1840 he secured, through Sir Charles Wheatstone, a post at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Mr. George Biddle Airy, then Astronomer Royal, appointing him to the Magnetical and Meteorological Department, where in 1843 he was engaged for a period of three months on the Commission to determine the longitude of Valencia.

Sir George Biddell Airy (27 July 1801 – 2 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two- dimensional problems in solid mechanics and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation has been tarnished by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of Neptune in 1846.

Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875) shown here on the right was born above his family's shop at 52-54 Westgate Street in Barnwood, Gloucestershire, and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to his uncle, a musical instrument maker in London.

Charles became fascinated with the physics of both sound and electricity, and having invented the concertina in 1829 went on to perfect a stereoscope for viewing photographs (which became invaluable for 20th Century aerial reconnaissance), and devices for measuring the speed of electricity and light.

In 1834, Wheatstone became Professor of experimental physics at Kings College London, and in 1837 - along with William Cooke 88

developed the electric telegraph. He was later knighted by Queen Victoria for his work on the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He is also remembered for the Wheatstone bridge - used to measure electrical resistance - and the “Magic Harp" which inspired Alexander Graham Bell to invent the telephone.

During his life at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, It is curious that during the years of his greatest activity (1844-1856) Dr. John Russell Hind suffered from extreme bad health. Physically he was apparently a strong man, but he was excessively nervous and frequently had to give up work for a time because of "excessive nervous exhaustion."

He was of a most retiring disposition, and worked more for science' sake than for the admiration of his fellow men or for his own pecuniary advancement. In his diary, under January 15, 1849 he wrote— “I mentioned to Mr. Airy to-day that I thought very soon I should have to relinquish observations at night entirely," but happily a few months' rest enabled him to resume work and complete the task he had set himself to do.

John Russell Hind left Greenwich in 1844 to succeed William Rutter Dawes (1799-1868) shown on the left, as Director of George Bishop’s private observatory in Regent’s Park, London. It is from this observatory, which was equipped with a fine 7-inch Dolland refractor, that he did most of his observational work and built up his fine reputation.

Hind married in 1846 and had six children. On the 30th September 1846 he became the first British observer to successfully identify Neptune after Franz Friedrich Ernst Brunnow (1821-1891) had wrote to him informing him of Johann Galle and Heinrich d’Arrest’s discovery on the 23rd September. The fact that he was contacted directly, ahead of all other national astronomers including the Astronomer Royal Mr. George Airy, attests to his growing international reputation at the age of 23.

Mr. George Bishop, shown here on the right, had determined before building his observatory that it "should do something." A successful businessperson, he had always had a great wish to possess an observatory, but never the opportunity until he was more than fifty years of age; and being then unable to work personally, he took great pains to get good assistants, and set them to observe with a definite objective.

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John Russell Hind’s search for minor planets was commenced in November 1846, employing the Berlin star maps (to which attention had doubtless been attracted by the discovery of Neptune two months before). As far as they extended, small stars of 9 or 10th magnitude, not marked on the maps, being inserted from time to time as they came under examination.

The first discovery was announced to the Rev. Richard Sheepshanks, then vice-president of The Royal Society, in the following letter— 3 Allsop's Terrace, New Road, London; 1847 August 13d I6h.

"DEAR Sir, I have this night discovered another member of the singular group of planets between Mars and Jupiter. It shines as a star of 8.9 magnitude, the observed positions being G.M.T. Aug. 13 at: 09:35:17 GMT RA 19H 57M 30.52 DEC -13° 27’ 23.4” At: 10:45:19 GM RA 19H 57M 28.02S DEC -13° 27’ 29.0” Showing a retrograde motion in R.A. of 51 daily. Have I been fortunate enough to detect the lost planet of Cacciatore?

Yours very respectfully, J. R. Hind.

Rev. R. Sheepshanks, M.A. Hind discovered Iris (6) on 13 August 1847. De Morgan, who also suggested a symbol, proposed the name Iris. Writing to Sheepshanks (1847 August 22) Hind says— "I find the name is approved at Cambridge and Greenwich, though Thetis was preferred. However this will do for the next, if no better is to be found."

The name Thetas was not, however, used until the discovery of (17)

by Luther in 1852.

From 1847, onwards Hind discovered a wealth of new astronomical objects by scrutinising the equatorial and ecliptic regions of the sky with the 7-inch refractor (Shown here) and comparing what he saw with the recently published Berlin star maps. By 1850, he was the World’s leading discoverer of variable stars with 12 out of a named 90

list of 41. By 1854, he had discovered 10 of the first 30 numbered asteroids.

In 1847, he was made a corresponding member of the Society Philomathique of Paris. In 1850, he was one of a Commission, for the Exhibition of 1851, respecting machinery as applied to direct use.

The discovery of Flora on October 18 was also announced to Mr. Sheepshanks by a letter written the same night at 4 p.m., giving three positions for 11h 40m 4s, 15h 4m 10s, and 15h 52M 27s respectively. Soon afterwards, Hind wrote the following letter to a Mr. Fox regarding the new name for this asteroid— Mr. Bishop’s observatory, 1847 October 22nd Sir, I feel greatly obliged to you for the mention of the name you propose for the new Planet. Some time before I received your letter, the choice of a name and symbol had been referred to Sir John Herschel, who after consideration has fixed upon Flora with the “Rose of England” as an emblem, under the following form. Under these circumstances, I have no power to adopt the name Calypso, which, however, I like very much.

I rather incline to Olber’s hypothesis, perhaps for want of a better. At any rate, I feel certain there are more planets to find.

I am, Sir, Your most Obedient Servant. J. R. Hind H. Fox Talbot Esqre.

On the discovery of asteroid (12) Victoria on 13 September 1850, the Americans strongly objected to the proposed name Victoria, which happened to be also that of our Queen Victoria (1819-1911). Indeed, they went so far as to substitute Clio, and the Astronomer Royal wrote, "When I looked for Victoria in the index to Gould's Journal and expected at least to find 'Victoria-see Clio,' and found it not, I was very indignant." At the same time, he advised Dr. Hind not to use the name Clio for a subsequent discovery in 1852, which "would cause much confusion and would be interpreted as exhibiting a too angry temper." However, the name was later adopted!

In 1851, John Russell Hind was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, in the place of Schumacher.

There were eighteen candidates for the election, Dr. John Hind being chosen by forty-five out of forty-six votes. The same year he was 91

made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and subsequently he was elected into the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, and the Swedish Royal Society.

In 1851, he went with Mr. Dawes to Sweden to observe the total eclipse of the Sun. In 1852, the English astronomer John Russell Hind, exploring the constellation Taurus through his telescope, found a dim star that was not noted on his charts. The new star, named T Tauri has since become something of a minor celebrity among astronomers.

“On the evening of 15 December, 1855, I remarked in R.A. (1856) 7h 46m 33s.65, N.P.D. 670 37’ 17".1, an object shining as a star of the ninth magnitude, with a very blue planetary light, which I have never seen before during the five years that my attention has been directed to this quarter of the heavens. On the next fine night, 16 Dec. 1856, it was certainly fainter than on the 15th by half a magnitude or more.

Since that date, I have not had an opportunity of examining it until last evening, January 10, when its brightness was not greater than that of stars of the twelfth magnitude. It is evidently a variable star of a very interesting description, inasmuch as the minimum brightness appears to extend over a great part of the whole period, contrary to what happens with Algol and S Cancri.”

Four objects in the sky bear his name. R Lep was christened "Hind’s Crimson Star" after he wrote in October 1845: "of the most intense crimson, resembling a blood-drop on the background of the sky.”

NGC1555 became known as "Hind’s Variable Nebula" following its discovery together with T Tau in October 1852. Hind wrote, "Last night (11th October) I noticed a very small nebulous looking object preceding a star of 10th magnitude, which to my surprise, and had escaped attention on the map for 4h RA recently published – possibly it may be variable.

In 1858, Hind received a Testimonial from The Royal Society and it fell to Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), himself one of the recipients, to deliver the address on the merit of those who received Testimonials: In speaking of Dr. Hind, he remarked— "No name comes oftener before the astronomical world, as an assiduous observer and able computist in the department of astronomy which the nature of the instrumental means committed to his charge gives him an immediate connection with, as a diligent 92

observer of double-stars and computer of their orbits, for instance, or as the first detector of several comets, one of them a very remarkable one, which, from his calculation of its orbit, he was enabled to follow up to its actual perihelion, and to behold it at noon-day presenting a clear and well-defined disc within 2° of the Sun. “John Russell Hind observed many comets and computed their orbits. The Earth is believed to have passed through the tail of Comet Tebbutt on 30 June 1881 and Hind wrote in the Times; "There was a peculiar phosphorescence or illumination of the sky, which I attributed at the time to an aurora glare; it was remarked by other persons as something unusual.”

This was an evening observation before sunset. Hind later wrote in the Times; "Allow me to draw attention to a circumstance relating to the present comet. It appears not only possible, but even probable, that in the course of Sunday last, the Earth passed through the tail at a distance of perhaps two-thirds of its length from the nucleus.”

This was the same comet observed by Nottingham astronomer Thomas William Bush at his Thyra Grove, Mapperley observatory on June 23 – 25th, which Bush described in detail in a letter to The Nottingham Guardian.

Since his retirement in 1891 from the Nautical Almanac office Dr. John Russell Hind lived quietly at Twickenham, not appearing much in public, nor even visiting the societies to which he belonged; but he still kept up a lively interest in his favorite study, and was a regular subscriber and contributor to the scientific journals at home and abroad. He died at Twickenham, on 23 December 1895, of heart disease accelerated by a chill, and was buried at the Twickenham Cemetery. Asteroid number 1897 is officially named "Hind" as is also a lunar crater.

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Images for John Russell Hind

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Charles Wheatstone

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George Bishop

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An illustration showing inside George Bishop's Observatory

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Appendix 2 | The comet observed by Thomas William Bush The discovery of the Great Comet of 1861 by John Tebbutt Sydney Observatory Published by Nick Lomb on November 16, 2010.

The Great Comet of 1861 on 30 June 1861, in Descriptive Astronomy

by George Chambers, drawn by G Williams. Courtesy Sydney Observatory On 13 May 1861 a young farmer at Windsor, a little town near Sydney, saw a fuzzy star. On checking his celestial charts, he saw that there was no nebula listed for that position. Still, he could not be sure that it was a comet until he saw it move against the background stars. It took until the 21 May until he could detect sufficient movement to be almost certain. He then sent off a letter to the Rev. William Scott, the Government Astronomer at Sydney Observatory, as well as a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald. This letter was published in the paper on 25 May 1861, the young farmer’s 27th birthday.

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John Tebbutt’s letter to the Sydney Morning Herald 25 May 1861, courtesy of the National Library of Australia.

While researching a talk I gave this morning (16 November 2010) to the Diurnals section of the Astronomical Society of Victoria I was pleased to be able to find the letter online from the National Library of Australia. John Tebbutt had the excellent habit of reporting his discoveries and observations to the public by publishing them in the newspapers as well as in the astronomical journals.

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The marine telescope with which John Tebbutt discovered the Great Comet of 1861. It is still at Windsor Observatory. Image and copyright Nick Lomb Š, all rights reserved.

In those days, there was no quick communication between Australia and the rest of the world so that when the comet became visible in the northern hemisphere on 29 June 1861, it was a complete surprise to the astronomers in Britain and elsewhere. In his memoirs, Tebbutt quotes from Descriptive Astronomy by George F Chambers, 1867 edition: Few comets created greater sensation than the Great Comet of 1861. It was discovered by Mr. J. Tebbutt, an amateur observer in New South Wales, on May 13, prior to its perihelion passage, which took place on June 11. Passing from the southern hemisphere into the northern it became visible in this country (England) on June 29, though it was not generally seen until the next evening.

The discovery of this comet was a great way for young John Tebbutt to introduce himself to astronomers the world over. Over the next 40 years or so, he put out such a prodigious stream of high quality observations of comets, minor planets, variable stars, eclipses and transits that his reputation continually increased. At the time, his oneman observatory at Windsor was regarded as the equal of the government observatories in Sydney and Melbourne. Today he is rightly judged as having been Australia’s foremost amateur astronomer.

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101

The Brockhurst Observatory

The Brockhurst Observatory

Richard Pearson 90000

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Richard Pearson

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