This series explores how Hackney’s Old Stone Age was discovered and preserved due to the rapid urban development of the late 1800s and the dedicated work of a handful of collectors. In this post we explore the life and impact of the forgotten figure behind Hackney Museum’s prehistoric collection, Joseph Exall Greenhill.
Joseph Exhall Greenhill (1841-1907)
Greenhill was a respected scientist, inventor and headmaster, who made a significant contribution to the study of the Old Stone Age in east London.
He grew up in poverty and by the age of 10 was living in a workhouse. Despite this challenging childhood, Greenhill became highly educated and relatively wealthy. By the age of 30 he founded his own private school, Vermont College, on Downs Park Road, Clapton, on the current site of the Pembury Estate.
He had a passion for gadgets and inventing, driving his own car long before any were widely sold. He built his own musical instruments, experimented with phonographs, wireless telegraphy, and radiography.
“Precisely how Greenhill achieved this rise is for future research but suffice to say that by the age of 30 he had overcome numerous inequalities and risen from nothing to become an employer wealthy enough to afford staff at school and a domestic servant at home.”
Professor Mark White, ‘Collectors, Class and Conflict at the Lower Palaeolithic discovery at Stoke Newington, 1878-1884’
Greenhill & Prehistoric Clapton
After a chance discovery of stone tools at the site of the London Orphanage Asylum in Lower Clapton in 1880, Greenhill became an enthusiastic collector of artefacts and fossils from the Old Stone Age. Within eight years he collected 300 items from the Clapton area.
His enthusiasm and willingness to purchase artefacts found by others made him an easy target for forgers. On meeting the talented East London flint-knapper and forger George Glover (1854-1936), Greenhill promised to buy everything that Glover could ‘find’ before becoming aware of the trick. Unlike his contemporaries, Greenhill did not label artefacts with details of where they were found, limiting their scientific and archaeological value for research after his death in 1907.
“The whole mischief is brought about by collectors of curios airing their superficial knowledge before groups of workmen…It is a curious fact in regard the Stoke Newington forgeries, that some of the collectors who informed the workmen of the points of authenticity in stone tools were themselves severely bitten by the forgers. This fact should delight the hearts of all antiquaries.”
Worthington George Smith, in a comment mainly targeted at Greenhill, 1884.
Legacy
A member of many local literary and scientific societies such as the Hackney Microscopical and Natural History Society, Greenhill presented many papers and gave talks on the subjects of Prehistoric Hackney, Early Man and the Brick Earths of the Lea Valley.
A community fundraising effort successfully purchased Greenhill’s collection of artefacts from his widow, and in 1909 this was gifted to Hackney Council to be displayed in Hackney Central Library. These items are now in the care of Hackney Museum.
“Regrettably the work of the late J. Exhall Greenhill, Principal of Vermont College, Clapton, seems to have been forgotten. Yet, about eighty years ago his investigations helped to throw considerable light on the prehistory of east and north-east London.“
A.D.Lacaille, writing in 1962 for the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society
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Content for this blog featured in the exhibition ‘Hackney 300,000 BC: Meet the Neanderthal neighbours and curious creatures of the borough’s Old Stone Age’ at Hackney Museum 26 January – 29 July 2023.