John Ellingham Brooks

One of the more shadowy students at the BSA was John Ellingham Brooks (1863-1929). He had been educated at St Paul's College, Stony Stratford, Bucks., and then Peterhouse, Cambridge (1883-86; BA 1886). He was admitted at Lincoln's Inn (28 January 1887) and passed his Roman Law examination (1889).

In 1890 Brooks met (William) Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) in Heidelberg (see also Samuel J. Rogal, A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia [Greenwood, 1997]). Bryan Connon has noted:

Ten years his senior and an ostentatious homosexual, Brooks encouraged his ambitions to be a writer and introduced him to the works of Schopenhauer and Spinoza.

Brooks was admitted to the BSA in Ernest Gardner's last year as Director (1894/95). The reason stated was to do:

some preliminary work with a view to further research in another Session, especially in connection with the early Italian travellers in Greece, with the Greek teachers in Italy at the time of the Renaissance, and with the records and doings of the French and English travellers at the end of last and the beginning of the present century.

Brooks was re-admitted as an Associate in 1896/97 under Cecil Harcourt-Smith.

In 1895, the year of Oscar Wilde's imprisonment, Brooks and Maugham arrived on Capri. It was there Brooks met (Beatrice) Romaine Mary Goddard (1874-1970), an American citizen. Brooks and Goddard married on Capri on 3 June 1903; they separated after a year.

On Capri Brooks developed a close relationship with Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940), another former student at the BSA (1891/92-1894/95). Benson recalled in As We Were (1930):

For several years I had been out here for some weeks of the summer, sharing the quarters of a friend of mine resident on the island, but now we had taken between us the lease of the Villa Cercola, and my footing in Capri was on a more permanent basis. ... the house was much bigger than Brooks's last habitation. (p. 339)

These events took place in 1914, but Benson had clearly been visiting Capri since 1895 (see Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasies [London: Routledge, 1993], 126) as he had been part of the circle of Goddard, Maugham and Brooks. The Villa Cercola was also leased with Maugham.

Brooks died in May 1929.

Associates of the BSA: Ambrose Poynter

Ambrose Poynter (1867-1923) was in the second batch of Associates to be appointed. Poynter was the son of Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919) - who chaired the Annual Meeting of Subscribers in July 1897 - and his wife Agnes (Macdonald) (1843-1906); his grandfather was the architect Ambrose Poynter (1796-1886). The wider family included his cousins Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) and the prime minister Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), and his uncle the painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98)

The younger Ambrose Poynter had been educated at Eton, and the Royal Academy School where he articled to George Aitchison (1825-1910), professor of architecture (1887-1905). Poynter became an architect in 1893. In the spring of 1897 he travelled to Greece to work on Roman period pavements in the Theatre of Dionysos and the Odeion of Herodes Atticus at Athens, and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

Reference
Poynter, A. M. 1896/7. "Remarks on three sectile pavements in Greece." Annual of the British School at Athens 3: 175-81.

Image
Theatre of Dionysos, Athens. © David Gill.

Honorary Students (1895-1915)

In addition to 'Associates of the School',

XXIII. The Managing Committee may elect as Honorary Students of the School such persons as they may from time to time deem worthy of that distinction, and may also elect as Associates of the School any persons actively engaged in study or exploration in Greek lands. (1907/08)

Honorary Students included a number of former Associates:

• 1895/96: Professor John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927). Trinity College, Dublin.
  
• 1895/96: (Sir) Arthur J. Evans (1851-1941). Keeper, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
  
• 1896/97: J.Linton Myres. Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Former student.
• 1897/98: Professor Ernest A. Gardner. Former Director.

In addition:

• 1904: Professor Alexander van Millingen (1840-1915). Professor of History at Robert College, Constantinople.
• 1906: William Henry Forbes (1851-1914). Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.
• 1908: Professor William John Woodhouse (1866-1937). University of Sydney. Former student.
  
• 1912: Alan J.B. Wace (1879-1957). Former Assistant Director; later Director.
  
• 1914: Professor (Sir) John D. Beazley (1885-1970).
• 1914: Edward Norman Gardiner (1864-1930). Corpus Christi College, Oxford
• 1914. Richard M. Dawkins (1871-1955). Former Director.
  
• 1915: Frederick W. Hasluck (1878-1920). Former Assistant Director.
  

Associates of the School (1896-1913)

Associates were first elected in 1896.

XXII. The Managing Committee may elect as Associates of the School any persons actively engaged in study or exploration in Greek lands; and may also elect as honorary members such persons as they may from time to time think desirable. (1899/1900)

Associates include:

• 1895/96: Rev. Alfred Hamilton Cruikshank (1862-1927). Assistant Master at Winchester (1894-1910); Durham.
  
• 1895/96: Professor John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927). Trinity College, Dublin.
  
• 1895/96: (Sir) Arthur J. Evans (1851-1941). Keeper, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
  
• 1896/97: Ambrose Poynter (1867-1923). Eton. Royal Academy.
  
• 1896/97: John Ellingham Brooks (1863-1929). Peterhouse, Cambridge. Former student.
  
• 1896/97: John Linton Myres (1869-1954). Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Former student.
• 1897/98: Professor Ernest A. Gardner (1862-1939). University College London. Former Director.
• 1902: Louisa Pesel (c. 1870-1947). Directrice of the Royal Hellenic School of Needlwork and Laces at Athens.
  
• 1902: John Foster Crace (d. 1960). Classical master at Eton (1901-35).
  
• 1903: Mona Wilson (1872-1954). Newnham College, Cambridge (1892-96).
  
• 1903: J.S. Carter
• 1903: B. Townsend
• 1903: (Sir) Augustus Moore Daniel (1866-1950). Trinity College, Cambridge. Assistant Director of the British School at Rome; Director of the National Gallery.
  
• 1906: H.W. Allen
• 1906: William Miller (1864-1945). Hertford College, Oxford. Journalist and historian.
  
• 1906: George Kennedy
• 1910: (Sir) Alfred Eckhard Zimmern (1879-1957). Winchester; New College, Oxford. Fellow and tutor of New College (1904-09); Inspector, Board of Education (1912-15).
  
• 1912: Mary B. Negreponte
• 1913: C.J. Ellingham. St John's College, Oxford.
  
• 1913: Capt. H.M. Greaves, R.A. Keble College, Oxford.
  

Winchester and the BSA

Former pupils of Winchester made a significant impact on the archaeology of the Mediterranean world in the period prior to the First World War. Three of the first four directors were educated there:

• Penrose, Francis Cranmer (1817–1903), director 1886-87
• Smith, Cecil Harcourt [later Sir Cecil Harcourt-Smith] (1859-1944), director 1895-97
• Hogarth, David George (1862-1927), director 1897-1900

Among the students of the BSA were:

• Herbert Awdry (1851-1909)
  
• John Frederick Randall Stainer (1866-1939), son of Sir John Stainer
• (Sir) John Linton Myres (1869-1954)
  
• Guy Dickins (1881-1916)
• Alexander Craddock Bolney Brown (1882-1942)
• George Leonard Cheesman (1884-1915)
• William Reginald Halliday (Hoffmeister) (1886-1966)
• Cyril Bertram Moss-Blundell (c. 1890-1915)
  

One of the masters at Winchester during this period (1894-1928) was Arthur George Bather (1868-1928). He had been educated at Rossall and King's College, Cambridge. He was admitted as a student to the BSA in 1889/90 (under Ernest Gardner), and held a series of studentships until 1894. Bather had been preceded by another former BSA student, Edward Ernest Sikes (1867-1940) who had been an assistant master in 1890-91.

Rev. Alfred Hamilton Cruikshank (1862-1927), an exact contemporary of Hogarth at Winchester, was an associate student of the BSA. He returned to Winchester (from Harrow) as an assistant master in 1894 (and chaplain from 1896); he left for Durham in 1910.

Other Wykehamist archaeologists of this era included Arthur Hamilton Smith (1860-1941), Keeper at the British Museum and later director of the British School at Rome; Francis John Haverfield (1860–1919), Camden professor of ancient history at Oxford; and Thomas Ashby (1874–1931), director of the British School at Rome.

Associates of the School

The first associates of the BSA were elected in 1896 during the directorship of Cecil Harcourt Smith. The purpose, according to the BSA's 'Rules and Regulations' (XXII, 1895/6), was for individuals who were 'actively engaged in study or exploration in Greek lands'.

Among them was the Rev. Alfred Hamilton Cruikshank (1862-1927), a younger contemporary of Harcourt Smith at Winchester; both were scholars. (Penrose, the first director, was also a Wykehamist.) Cruikshank subsequently went to New College, Oxford where he obtained a first in classics. After serving as tutor at New College (1889-91) he taught at Harrow (1891-94) before returning to Winchester in 1894 (and was chaplain from 1896). Cruikshank visited the Meteora during 1895/96 and published an account in the newly established Annual (A.H. Cruickshank [sic.], 'Meteora', Annual of the British School at Athens 2, 1895/6, 105-12). In 1910 Cruikshank left Winchester to hold the chair of Greek and Classical Literature at the University of Durham.

Two other scholars were elected Associates at the same time: Professor J.B. Bury of Trinity College, Dublin, and Arthur J. Evans, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. Both were later elected Honorary Students of the School.