Preparing for Purton

13 May 2011

With just one week until I go to Purton to take part in their Nevil Maskelyne bicentenary celebrations, I am beginning to gather together everything I'll need. Fortunately, I can use Maskelyne himself to help me. In September 1794, the Astronomer Royal wrote himself some notes (now preserved in Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre) on what to take on one of his regular trips to Wiltshire. This is what he took:

Hearsley's abstract Tables of taxes
Paterson's roads & maps of Counties
Tea; Wine; brandy; Rum; Cork-screw;
Decanters; Buchan's domestic medicine;
Lewis's Dispensatory; Prayer books;
Map of Wiltshire; Wood's Essence for
meat and fish; Worstead boot-stockings;
Flannel waistcoat; Spare suit of cloths;
spare wig; great Coat; Boots, spurs
and whip; gloves; oyl-skin hood; spare
pair of shoes; umbrellas; Paper
pen and ink, wax and wafers, &
pen-knife; knife with instruments;
money-weighing machine. Rasor,
strop, brush, shaving cloth; Books of
amusement; Papers about estates &
leases of the estates; Papers about
the board of Longitude; maps of the
seat of war; Messuage cards; 2 pair
of buckles; 6S stamp & other stamps;
wax-candle; clothes brush; Cheshire &
parmesan cheese; funnel; ounce
measure; lamp-wicks; quills; pens;
Ivory folder; silver tea spoons & table
spoons; pencils; silver scales;
Sermons; sermon-book & band. Chariot
stool. Pocket-farrier. Small quadt & compass
and measuring wheel.

For our research project, it's interesting to see him taking his Board of Longitude papers with him - perhaps not surprising, since he and Joseph Banks were very much running the Board by 1794. As for me, I guess it just tells me to remember to take the notes for my talk (it's a kind of sermon, after all) and a change of clothes. I can probably manage without a money-weighing machine, but he's right that cheese is always needed.