Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Greenwell, William
GREENWELL, WILLIAM (1820–1918), archaeologist, the eldest son of William Thomas Greenwell, of Greenwell Ford, Lanchester, Durham, by his wife, Dorothy, daughter of Francis Smales, was born at Greenwell Ford 23 March 1820. He was the elder brother of Dora Greenwell [q.v.], the poetess. He was educated at Durham grammar school and at University College, Durham, where he took his B.A. degree in 1839. Originally intended for the bar, he entered at the Middle Temple, but owing to ill-health returned to Durham in 1841 and took the theological course at University College. He graduated M.A. in 1843 and was ordained in the following year. After travelling in Germany and Italy in 1846, he was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Ovingham with Mickley, Northumberland, in 1847. Resigning in 1850 he served for a short time as curate to Archdeacon Robert Isaac Wilberforce [q.v.] at Burton Agnes, Yorkshire, and then acted as assistant to William George Henderson [q.v.], at that time principal of Hatfield Hall, Durham, afterwards dean of Carlisle. In 1852 Greenwell was appointed principal of Neville Hall, a hostel for medical students in Newcastle. This post he resigned in 1854 when he began his long connexion with Durham Cathedral as a minor canon. In 1862 he was appointed librarian to the dean and chapter and was placed in charge of the large and valuable collection of charters and rolls belonging to the cathedral. He was thus enabled to continue the work of arranging them, which had been begun by Joseph Stevenson [q.v.] during the years 1841 to 1846. In 1865 he was appointed to the living of St. Mary-the-Less in Durham, which he held until his death. He resigned his minor canonry and librarianship in 1907. He died at Durham, unmarried, 27 January 1918.
Greenwell began the study of documents by editing the Beldon Buke for the Surtees Society in 1852. His most important work in this line was the Feodarium Prioratus Dunelmensis, published for the same society in 1872: in this work he proved that the foundation charters of the Benedictine convent at Durham were forgeries. In 1856 he began his work as a collector, first of Greek coins (which were sold to America in 1901), then in 1858 of prehistoric bronze implements, which were sold in 1908 and are now in the British Museum. At the same period he began to explore barrows, the results appearing in 1877 in British Barrows, a work produced in collaboration with his friend, George Rolleston [q.v.]. As a result he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1878.
Greenwell’s great reputation as an authority on historical objects and documents, and on architecture, caused him to be much consulted; and to all genuine inquirers the benefit of his varied stores of knowledge and keen critical faculty were readily available. ‘The canon’, as he was popularly known, had a remarkable flair for documents and all the other objects of which he was to the end a keen collector. An admirable raconteur, with a keen sense of humour, he was very downright in his opinions and never hesitated to express them, when he thought right, with vigour and pungency. He continued active up to the end of his long and full life; for in addition to other work he took a considerable share in local affairs. No notice of so keen a fisherman would be complete without a reference to the salmon and trout flies named after him. His portrait, painted in 1898 by Arthur Stockdale Cope, R.A., hangs in the cathedral library at Durham.
[J. C. Hodgson, Memoir (with bibliography) in Archaeologia Aeliana, third series, vol. xv, 1918; personal knowledge.]