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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Notes 
1 
Taken from the beginning of A.D. Passmore’s 
unpublished field notebook [Hereafter referenced as 
ADP when quoted from], which he started in 1903. It 
contains some of his activities from before 1903 but 
the majority of the information is from after that 
date. The original manuscript is in the Wiltshire 
Archaeological and Natural History Museum at 
Devizes. A copy of this notebook is in the Ashmolean 
Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford. 
Determining the year of Passmore’s birth is difficult. 
In obituaries, he is said to have been 85 when he died 
in 1958, which would indicate that he was born in 
1873. In the 1891 census, however, he is recorded as 
being 14, which means that he was born in 1877. The 
date from the census is used here. 
Passmore was elected a member in 1923. 
John Treherne died in 1989. The character Uncle 
Hector, who is alleged to have been based on 
Passmore, was a cousin of the mother of the narrator. 
This relationship was possibly based on reality, 
though I have not come across Passmore making a 
reference to any living relations. Passmore did, 
apparently, have a ‘man-trap’ in his collection (Anon 
1898, 92), but whether or not he ever actually used it 
will never be known. Many events of the life of 
‘Uncle Hector’, as revealed in the course of the novel, 
are similar to events in Passmore’s life. 
This was written after Elliot did some ‘investigation’ 
after finding a book with Passmore’s name in it in a 
skip outside Sotheby’s. His ‘research’ included 
reading Passmore’s obituary and chatting to 
Passmore’s neighbours, who said that Passmore 
dressed up like a Roman, in a toga, at the end of his 
life, which is dubious. It is also unlikely that he was 
the last Englishman out of King Tut’s tomb. Howard 
Carter made his famous discovery in 1922, and 
catalogued the contents from 1925 to 1932 (Murray 
1999b, 294 — 297). Passmore spent time in Egypt in 
1910 to 1912, but in the years following Carter’s 
discovery seems to have been engaged in 
archaeological activities in Wiltshire. 
It is not clear from the letter whether it was sent to 
Dr. Eliot Curwen, or Dr. E. Cecil Curwen, both of 
whom were involved in archaeology in Sussex. 
This is now the Department of Prehistory and Europe. 
There is no record of this accession at the Bristol 
Museum and Art Gallery, thus it is not listed as being 
there in Appendix 2. 
The identification of Durocornovium with Wan- 
borough is now accepted as correct. Both Burnham 
(1990) and Rivet (1979) identify Durocornovium 
with Wanborough, but Passmore’s publication is not 
cited as the source for this information. According to 
Rivet, Passmore did arrive at the right conclusion but 
‘it is based on the supposition that the distance from 
Gloucester to Cirencester was 14 (instead of 18) 
Roman miles; other figures in his table suggest that 
he was using a false value for the Roman mile’ (Rivet 
1970, 58). 
0 Schlanger (2002) discusses the importance of 
recognising the value of such manuscripts. 
One of Passmore’s discoveries from Swindon was a 
fossilized turtle. This specimen was subsequently 
identified by C.W. Andrews of the British Museum of 
Natural History as a new genus and named Tholemys 
passmorei after A.D. Passmore (Andrews 1921, 153). 
Passmore acquired this collection of worked flints 
from the area around Lambourn, Berkshire, in 1925. 
This collection also contained close to six hundred 
flints from Pusey, Oxfordshire. It is possible that 
‘Barnes’ was J.O’N. Barnes [also referred to as J. 
O’Barnes and Mr. Barnes] who had a collection of 
archaeological finds from Berkshire (Anon 1895, 190, 
204 — 205). 
The Departments of Egyptian Antiquities and 
Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum 
were also recipients of objects from Passmore. [The 
Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities 
was split into the Department of Egyptian 
Antiquities and the Department of Western Asiatic 
Antiquities in 1955 (Miller 1973)]. See Appendix 2. 
‘Treasure Trove was replaced in 1996 by the Treasure 
Act. 
References 
Unpublished archival sources 
(ADP unpublished year page) = Field notebook, kept by 
A.D. Passmore from 1903 to 1958. The original 
manuscript is in The Wiltshire Archaeological and 
Natural History Museum, Devizes. There is a 
photocopy of this manuscript in the Department of 
Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum of Art and 
Archaeology, Oxford. The year or date, if known, 
indicates when the entry was written. 
ASH = Passmore letters in the Department of 
Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum of Art and 
Archaeology, Oxford. 
BM = Passmore letters in the Department of Prehistory, 
British Museum. 
BR = Passmore letters in the Bristol Museum [Bris530 
and Bris3606]. 
KM = Passmore letters in the Alexander Keiller 
Museum, Avebury. 
LM = Passmore letter in Lewes Museum, East Sussex. 
NHML = Natural History Museum, London [NHM 
DF100-175]. 
UMNH = Passmore letters in the Natural History 
Museum, University of Oxford. 
V&A = Passmore letters in the archives of the Victoria & 
Albert Museum, Kensington, London. [P497] 
