Main library

ART AND ARTEFACTS | Sculptures, portraits,
paintings and other items of interest at The Lit & Phil

Main Library,
Sir James Knott Room,
Committee Room

2: Main library, Sir James Knott Room, Committee Room

(drawn by Benjamin Green, engraved 1841 by William Collard)

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MAIN LIBRARY

FROM ENTRANCE, CLOCKWISE

Reid’s Clock

Like the Lit & Phil, the Newcastle
jeweller’s firm of Reid’s is a product
of late eighteenth-century cultural
and commercial development. Reid’s
was founded fifteen years before the
Lit & Phil in 1778, when the
silversmith Christian Kerr Reid came
to Newcastle from Roxburghshire and
set up business in St Nicholas’s
Churchyard (where Bewick’s
employer the engraver Ralph Beilby
also had his premises). Reid’s shop
moved, in step with Newcastle’s
shifting commercial centres, first to
the Groat Market, then to Grey St,
and finally to its current premises in
Blackett St. Through the nineteenth
century the firm gained considerable
prestige as goldsmiths, silversmiths,
and clock and watch makers.
In Reid’s shop, a clock was linked by
telegraph to Greenwich. Throughout
Newcastle and Gateshead seventeen
other clocks, including this one, were
linked to it, all controlled to the exact
Greenwich time.

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Charles Hutton (1737-1823)

Mathematician

Marble bust by Sebastian Gahagan, commissioned by subscribers
headed by Lord Eldon and including members of the Lit & Phil.

Hutton bequeathed it to the Society in his will. Despite the
inscription to the contrary, Hutton died in 1823!

From the humblest origins as a
collier’s son, Charles Hutton rose to
eminence as one of the country’s
leading mathematicians. At seven
years old he would have been sent to
work in the mines but for an elbow
injury, and so was sent to school
instead! As a young man he studied
mathematics in evening school while
also teaching at the school in
Jesmond where he had been a pupil.
He became one of the most successful
mathematics teachers in the region,
sought after by schools and wealthy
local families. Among his pupils
were both John Scott, (later Lord
Chancellor Earl of Eldon) and
Elizabeth (Bessie) Surtees who
famously eloped with Scott. Hutton’s
first publication in 1764 was “The
Schoolmaster’s Guide” setting out his
approach to the teaching of applied
mathematical studies such as
bookkeeping, navigation and surveying. This was followed in 1770 by
his “Treatise on Mensuration both in Theory and Practice”. The
young Thomas Bewick’s first assignment in wood engraving was to
illustrate this textbook. In the same year Hutton was responsible for
the first map of Newcastle to be based on accurate surveying
(engraved by Ralph Beilby).

Hutton left Newcastle in 1773 to become Professor of Mathematics in
the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. One year later he became a
Fellow of the Royal Society. Continuing to publish textbooks, treatises
and papers, he held his professorship until 1807 when he resigned for
health reasons. With a pension of £500 p.a. from the Board of
Ordnance he moved to central London where he lived until his death.


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FROM ENTRANCE, ANTI-CLOCKWISE

James Losh (1763-1833)

Marble bust by D. Dunbar, presented by the
subscribers at the anniversary meeting of 1832.
The Newcastle Journal, August 1st 1835, records
that Dunbar used the same model as the one sent
to John Lough in Italy when sculpting the full

figure marble now displayed on the Society’s
landing.

William George, Lord Armstrong (1810-1900)

Inventor, industrialist, philanthropist, President of the Lit & Phil
1860-1900

Marble bust by Alexander Munro. An original bust was
commissioned by members of the Society after a resolution of

February 1860 to raise subscriptions for a bust of their new
President. The current bust is a copy, also by Munro, which was
donated by Vickers Armstrong and replaces the damaged original.

Born in Shieldfield, William Armstrong received
a private education intended to prepare him for a
career in law. He practised as a solicitor until
the age of 36, but even as a boy had been
attracted to engineering. In 1845 he gave a
series of three lectures to the Lit & Phil on “the
Employment of a Column of Water as a Motive
Power for Propelling Machinery”. In 1846 he was
elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1847 he
opened business as W. G. Armstrong & Company,
producing hydraulic cranes and subsequently
also armaments and warships. In 1863 he
acquired the site outside Rothbury which became
his country home, Cragside, the first private
house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity.


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George Stephenson (1781-1848)

Civil and mechanical engineer

Marble bust by C. Moore, given 1850 by Robert
Stephenson.

Son of an illiterate mining employee in Wylam,
Stephenson recognised the value of education and
taught himself to read and write at the age of 18.
His understanding of steam-driven mining
machinery brought him a post as enginewright in
the Killingworth collieries. Here he collaborated
with Nicholas Wood to devise the mining safety
lamp which in December 1815 they demonstrated
at the Society’s monthly meeting. In September
1825 (two months after the opening of this
building) Stephenson drove his “Locomotion” on
the Stockton-Darlington Railway, passenger coach
attached! He became nationally famous after 1829
when he and his son Robert built the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway with its prize-winning
locomotive “Rocket”.

“Lemnian Athene”

Bronze replica of bronze attributed to Athenian
sculptor Phidias (c490-415 BC), presented to the

Society by Thomas Edward Hodgkin.

Athene was the Greek goddess of wisdom,
civilisation, justice, the arts, war and more.
Ancient Greek historians recorded that Phidias
made a sculpture of Athene for Athenians living
on the island of Lemnos to dedicate on the
Acropolis. However the sculpture no longer
exists intact, and although the original of this
head was united with a figure in 1891, the
reconstruction is controversial. The Lemnian
head exceptionally depicts Athene without a
helmet, thereby stressing her peaceable creative
characteristics.

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Wind Rose by F. Robson of Newcastle

One of half a dozen indoor wind roses known
in Britain. A pointer on the dial was
attached to a vane on the roof to show wind
direction.
This rose replaced an earlier example
acquired in 1840, which was destroyed in the
fire of 1893.

Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914)

Chemist, inventor and industrialist

Bronze seated statuette by his daughter Mrs Isobel Morcom, donated
by his family in October 1924.

Joseph Swan was born into a well-to-do family in
Pallion, a centre of Sunderland’s shipbuilding
industry. At 14 he was apprenticed to a
pharmacist but then became a partner in
Mawson’s, his brother-in-law’s manufacturing
chemist’s business on Mosley Street.
Subsequently the company became Mawson, Swan
and Morgan.

Swan’s most famous invention is the electric light
bulb. He experimented for nearly 30 years before
being ready to give a successful public
demonstration of his incandescent carbon lamp in
the lecture theatre of this building. His Low Fell home was the first
private building in the world to be lit by electricity, and the Lit & Phil
then became the first public building, when in 1880 Swan lit the entire
lecture room with his light bulbs. The first electrically lit street in the
world is claimed to be Mosley Street.

Swan also contributed significantly to the development of
photography through many innovations. He received several honours
for his achievements, including Fellowship of the Royal Society in
1894, and a knighthood in 1904.
He was President of this Society from 1911 until his death.


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Lord Armstrong (1810-1900)

Photogravure signed in pencil “Armstrong”, no date.

Spence Watson prints this image in his 1897 “History of the Literary
and Philosophical Society”, attributing the original portrait to the
London-based W.B. Richmond, R.A. But the image appears to be

copied directly from the portrait in oils by Mary Lemon Waller, done
for the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1882 when Armstrong’s term
as its President ended.
In its turn, Mrs Waller’s portrait appears to be modelled on an
original photographic portrait by the London studio of Lock and
Whitfield, also from 1882.
In 1898 Mrs Waller painted an updated version of her portrait for
Cragside, where it is displayed today in Cragside’s library. The
Cragside portrait is the one from which Thomas Garvie made his
copy now hanging in the Librarian’s Room.

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SIR JAMES KNOTT READING ROOM
New wing, opened 1889

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PASSAGE INTO ROOM, LEFT WALL

The Rev. William Turner
(1761-1859)

Portrait in oils of Turner as a
young man, unknown origin.

Turner was born in Wakefield of
non-conformist (“dissident”)
parents. He was educated at
Warrington Academy, an eminent
dissenting academy, and briefly at
Glasgow university. In 1782 he
was appointed pastor of Hanover
Square Unitarian Chapel in
Newcastle, and for the next six
decades he tirelessly devoted his
considerable intellectual and
personal gifts to educational and
social reform in the town and
beyond.

CORNER BEYOND REV. TURNER

Barometer by John Newman

Purchased for £20 in 1841.

John Newman designed his “standard” barometer in
1822 for the Royal Society. It proved so successful
that further models were commissioned from
Newman, all numbered. The observatory in Calcutta
holds No. 58; ours is No.62. Newman also gave the
Lit and Phil a copy of the Royal Society’s Report of
1840 which includes diagrams and operating
instructions for the barometer. The relevant page in
our instruction booklet for resetting the barometer is
extremely well worn!

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PASSAGE INTO ROOM, RIGHT WALL

The Rev. Robert Morrison D.D. (1782-1834)

Portrait in oils by Henry Perlee Parker,
donated to the Society by

the artist in 1833, probably painted
between 1824-1826 during the subject’s

visit to Britain.

Dr Morrison was an eminent Chinese
missionary and linguist. He grew up in
Newcastle but on becoming an ordained
missionary in 1807, he sailed for Canton
where he spent the rest of his life. He
compiled a Chinese dictionary and
grammar, translated the Bible into
Chinese and collected a substantial
Chinese library which later became the
core of the collection at the London
School of Oriental and African Studies.

Robert Stephenson (1803-1859)

Copy of marble bust by Edward William Wyon, made by the artist
and dated 1855.

The celebrated London sculptor Edward W.
Wyon (1811-1885) made busts of both George
and Robert Stephenson, and in 1858 presented
copies for display in Newcastle’s new Town
Hall on the Bigg Market. This was an
expression of the growing social standing of
technical achievement and those who brought
it about.
In 1860 members agreed to raise a
subscription to commission a further copy of
“our late lamented President” for the Society,
a fee of 80 guineas being payable to the artist
on satisfactory completion of the copy.
The bust was damaged during the fire of
1893.

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Thomas Bewick (1753-1828)

Marble bust 1825 by E.H.Baily R.A., commissioned
by subscription, presented by the subscribers.

Bewick was locally a well-known figure before the
founding of the Lit and Phil, not only for his work
in partnership with the engraver Ralph Beilby, but
also for his robust liberal sympathies. He was a
member of the Society from 1799 until his death.
His fame became national after the publication of
his two wonderfully illustrated works “General
History of Quadrupeds” (1790) and “History of
British Birds” (1797, 1804).

CENTRE OF ROOM

“The Third Geordie Lamp”

Experimental mining safety lamp by George Stephenson, 1815.

In 1815 the Lit and Phil’s monthly
meetings still took place in rented
premises on the Groat Market. The
meeting’s agenda for December 5th,
1815 was the reading of a paper from
Scotland (written by Dr John Murray)
on “an Improved Lamp for lighting
Coal Mines”, followed by
demonstrations of mining safety lamps
from three local sources. The third of
these was designed by “Messrs
Stephenson and Wood”, acquainted
through their connection with
Killingworth colliery where Nicholas
Wood was an apprentice mining
“viewer” (inspector), while Stephenson
was employed as an enginewright.
Wood credited discovery of the
principle of the lamp to Stephenson but
they collaborated closely in its development. The meeting was Wood’s
first attendance as a newly elected member of the Society. With
Stephenson’s assistance he demonstrated this prototype of their
design, and the lamp was presented to the Society.

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Quern stone

Origin unverified, possibly found during preparatory excavation to
lay the foundations of this building.
Part of the upper stone of a millstone grit
grinding stone, of the sort common in
“domestic” use for many centuries BC and into
Roman times. The lower stone is missing, as is
the wooden handle to rotate the upper stone.
Grain is poured in from above and crushed as
the upper stone rotates.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1830-1894)

Writer of travel, poetry and plays
Bronze bust, unknown sculptor, donated by the

widow of W.B.Paterson, member d.1951.

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COMMITTEE ROOM

The room was originally designed to accommodate the Lit & Phil’s
“Museum”. But in 1836 when the Natural History Society transferred the
museum collection to its newly built premises at the back of this building,
the museum function of the room became obsolete.
The room is photographed at the time of the reopening of the building after
the fire of 1893. The oval table may look familiar to those who frequent the
coffee hatch! The large oil painting of “Macbeth and the Witches” by the
Gateshead-born artist Edward Train (1801-1866), which was given to the Lit
& Phil in 1833 by Mr W. Hutton and other friends, was sold in the 1960s. 


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Robert Spence Watson (1837-1911)

Portrait by H. Macbeth Raeburn (1860-1947) from the original by Sir
George Reid, painted in 1904 for the National Liberal Club.

As a boy Robert Spence Watson was introduced to the Lit and Phil by
his father, beginning his lifelong attachment to the Society. He
chronicled its first 100 years in his “History of the Literary and
Philosophical Society, 1793-1896”, and was the Society’s President from
1901 until his death. He was also a solicitor, an active Liberal who
served from 1874-1897 as President of the Newcastle Liberal
Association, a Quaker philanthropist, and in line with a strong Lit &
Phil tradition, an educationist striving to institute opportunities for
higher education in this region.
He inaugurated the Cambridge University Extension lectures at the Lit
& Phil which continued from 1882 to 1935. He also involved the Lit &
Phil in supporting the College of Physical Science (founded 1871), later
renamed Armstrong College. Had he lived until 1963 he would have
seen the ultimate realisation of his vision, when from the origins he
had nurtured, Newcastle’s colleges gained independent University
status.


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Photographs: Tom Yellowley
Cover design: Shima Banks
Text and research: Alison Menzies
Assistance: Paul Gailiunas and other learned members.
Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018

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