William James Knowles
| William James Knowles | |||||||||||
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| Born | 1832 | ||||||||||
| Died | 1927 | ||||||||||
| Residence |
Culleybacky, Belfast [1881] Flixton Place, Ballymena, Co. Antrim [1883] | ||||||||||
| Occupation |
antiquarian educator | ||||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1881.10.25 proposed
death reported in Report of the Council for 1927
Notes From Elsewhere
William James Knowles (1832 - 1927):
Antiquarian
W. J. Knowles was born in Fenagh, near Cullybackey, County Antrim. He was educated privately, and later taught botany and geology. He taught in Cullybackey, Portglenone and Ballymena, such diverse subjects as heat and light and the principles of agriculture. He was the land agent for the Casement estate, and from 1879 to 1920, secretary of the Antrim County Land, Building and Investment Company. He embarked on his antiquarian career in 1870 and in 1871 discovered sandhill settlement sites in Portstewart, excavated at Whitepark Bay and at Tievebulliagh, where his major achievement was the discovery of a Neolithic Axe Factory. In 1878 he was secretary of the committee set up by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in order to investigate such sites. He founded the Ballymena Naturalists' Field Club and the Ballymena Archaeological Society. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, a member of Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, and a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. He published more than seventy papers in journals. His fine collection of antiquities was dispersed in 1924 and he left Ballymena and retired to Ballvcastle. He is buried at the Craigs.
See also book: The archaeology of a collection: the Keiller–Knowles collection of the National Museum of Ireland
by Peter Woodman, Nyree Finlay and Elizabeth Anderson
Born Fernagh, Co Antrim. Published seventy papers in journals, mainly on Northern Ireland archaeology. His collection of 30,000 items was sold in London in 1924.
Publications
External Publications
The Antiquity of Man in Ireland, being an account of the older series of Irish flint implements by W. J. Knowles (1914)
On the mounting of leaf-shaped arrow-heads of flint by W. J Knowles (1909)
Second report on the prehistoric remains from the sandhills of the coast of Ireland: A paper read before the Royal... by W. J Knowles (1891)
House Publications
Related Material Details
RAI Material
Other Material
In 1924 W.J. Knowles’s collection of 30,000 artefacts—the vast bulk of which comprised prehistoric Irish stone tools—was put up for auction in London. As a result, the largest collection of Irish archaeological artefacts was dispersed among a variety of dealers, collectors and museums. One of the purchasers, Alexander Keiller, donated 15,000 objects to the National Museum of Ireland in 1938, a large proportion of which derived from Knowles’s collection.
PRM field collector