Richard Buxton was born in 1786 and died in 1865. He was one of those remarkable working men who were self taught.*
He became an expert on botany, wrote books and struggled against poverty before dying obscurely. “I am well aware” he wrote “that a narrative of the life of a poor man like myself .... is anything but interesting.” and yet it has proved to be so. **
Buxton was a remarkable man living at a time when Manchester was fast becoming the “shock city of the industrial revolution.”***
During his lifetime the city became the centre of cotton manufacture and a huge sprawling place of overcrowded, mean and shoddy housing.
He witnessed some of the great political events of the nineteenth century as the working class attempted to assert their share of the wealth that their labours had created and yet it appears he remained aloof from it.
He was of a “quiet and retiring disposition” with a “humble opinion of his own great powers.”****
He was born at Sedgley Farm in Prestwich.
In 1788 his father “became much reduced in circumstances and had to leave his farm”, moving the family to Ancoats .
The Buxton’s were not alone. During the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth century thousands left the countryside for the cities, exchanging open fields for narrow streets.
Buxton did not expand on the reasons for the family move. It may be that they overstretched themselves or were just unlucky. But rural life could be hard and unpredictable. The standard of living was if anything worse than conditions in the fast expanding industrial towns.
They settled in one of those mean narrow streets off Great Ancoats Street, and later he lived on Gun Street.
At week ends he was off "botanizing", and on one memorable day walked from Manchester to Chorlton, and on across the Mersey, recording what he saw, and will no doubt have passed on the old parish church of St Clements on the green before crossing the meadows.
I was introduced to Buxton by David Bishop who is a passionate botanist and has patiently explained nature to me over the years and it was David who lent me the book Buxton wrote in 1849.
For a self taught man, his 'Botanical Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns Moses and Algae found Indigenous within Sixteen Miles of Manchester' is both a wonderful record of what there was to see, but also a testament to his interest and tenacity.
In a world where reading and writing are taken for granted, it is easy to gloss over the fact that at the age of sixteen he was illiterate, and had to set himself the task of learning to read.
What is all the more remarkable is that having mastered the spelling book and the narrative of the New Testament he realised he needed to know not only how to pronounce the words but their exact meaning.
And so “by this means I was enabled not only to read, but also to understand the meaning of what I read, and to speak it correctly.”
All the more remarkable given that his working day lasted from six in the morning till eight or nine at night.
The result is a book that has stood the test of time and one that botanists still use as a hand book and sits with those other books of poetry and local history and politics which were written by many who lived on the margins of poverty, and balanced these books against the demands of the day job.
Picture; gravestone of Richard Buxton photograph taken in 1916 by T Badderley, m72545, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass St Clements Church circa 1860 from the collection of Tony Walker and the meadows as Buxton would not have known it, December 2008. Courtesy of David Bishop, detail from Green's map of Manchester 1794, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
Location, Manchester, Chorlton, Prestwich
*Richard Buxton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=richard+Buxton
**Buxton R A, Botanical Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns Moses and Algae found Indigenous within Sixteen Miles of Manchester second edition of 1849 page iii
***Briggs Asa Victoria Cities Penguin Books 1963
****‘Death of Mr. Richard Buxton, the botanist’, Manchester Guardian January 5th 1865
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| Mr. Buxton's grave, Prestwich, 2012 |
Buxton was a remarkable man living at a time when Manchester was fast becoming the “shock city of the industrial revolution.”***
During his lifetime the city became the centre of cotton manufacture and a huge sprawling place of overcrowded, mean and shoddy housing.
 |
| Ancoats, 1794 |
He was of a “quiet and retiring disposition” with a “humble opinion of his own great powers.”****
He was born at Sedgley Farm in Prestwich.
In 1788 his father “became much reduced in circumstances and had to leave his farm”, moving the family to Ancoats .
The Buxton’s were not alone. During the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth century thousands left the countryside for the cities, exchanging open fields for narrow streets.
Buxton did not expand on the reasons for the family move. It may be that they overstretched themselves or were just unlucky. But rural life could be hard and unpredictable. The standard of living was if anything worse than conditions in the fast expanding industrial towns.
They settled in one of those mean narrow streets off Great Ancoats Street, and later he lived on Gun Street.
 |
| St Clements's circa 1870-80 |
I was introduced to Buxton by David Bishop who is a passionate botanist and has patiently explained nature to me over the years and it was David who lent me the book Buxton wrote in 1849.
For a self taught man, his 'Botanical Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns Moses and Algae found Indigenous within Sixteen Miles of Manchester' is both a wonderful record of what there was to see, but also a testament to his interest and tenacity.
In a world where reading and writing are taken for granted, it is easy to gloss over the fact that at the age of sixteen he was illiterate, and had to set himself the task of learning to read.
 |
| Out on the Meadows, 2008 |
And so “by this means I was enabled not only to read, but also to understand the meaning of what I read, and to speak it correctly.”
All the more remarkable given that his working day lasted from six in the morning till eight or nine at night.
The result is a book that has stood the test of time and one that botanists still use as a hand book and sits with those other books of poetry and local history and politics which were written by many who lived on the margins of poverty, and balanced these books against the demands of the day job.
Picture; gravestone of Richard Buxton photograph taken in 1916 by T Badderley, m72545, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass St Clements Church circa 1860 from the collection of Tony Walker and the meadows as Buxton would not have known it, December 2008. Courtesy of David Bishop, detail from Green's map of Manchester 1794, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
Location, Manchester, Chorlton, Prestwich
**Buxton R A, Botanical Guide to the Flowering Plants, Ferns Moses and Algae found Indigenous within Sixteen Miles of Manchester second edition of 1849 page iii
***Briggs Asa Victoria Cities Penguin Books 1963
****‘Death of Mr. Richard Buxton, the botanist’, Manchester Guardian January 5th 1865
What an extraordinary and admirable man, is it a readable book to a non-botanist?
ReplyDeleteWhat a remarkable and admirable self-educated man. In my opinion Manchester should consider erecting a statue in his remembrance. What an example to put before our young!
ReplyDeleteExcellent post.you can read (there's also a nice little video) about two other botanists, Horsefield and Percival, who lie side by side and close by to Richard Buxton at St Mary's in Prestwich here... https://prestwich.org.uk/history/people/naturalists.html
ReplyDeleteExcellent post.you can read (there's also a nice little video) about two other botanists, Horsefield and Percival, who lie side by side and close by to Richard Buxton at St Mary's in Prestwich here... https://prestwich.org.uk/history/people/naturalists.html
ReplyDelete