Transcript

of

Joshua Brooking-Rowe [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc. vol.  XL, (1908), pp. 40-42.

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1908 Newton Abbot meeting. Mr Brooking-Rowe’s life and many accomplishments have been recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 Supplement.A more succinct biography appears in Brian Mosely’s excellent Old Plymouth.UK website.The  obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Joshua Brooking-Rowe. A great loss has fallen on the Association by the (to many) unexpected death of Mr. Brooking-Rowe. He was present at the meeting of the Council in Exeter in February last, apparently in good health and with unwearied spirit. Since then, a few months of pain and alleviation, of hope and despair, have passed, and now it is our sad duty to pen this brief obituary notice.
Our late friend and colleague was born at Plymouth in 1837. His father was a well-known bookseller, who carried on business in Whimple Street in that town, from quite early in the last century. He printed and published The Plymouth Literary Magazine, the number of which for August, 1814, contained a memoir of the Rev. Dr. Bidlake, headmaster of the Plymouth Grammar School, and a steel engraving of Plympton Castle.
Whimple Street was a famous quarter for books, for on the opposite side to Rowe's, Haydon - father of Benjamin Haydon, the artist - sold books and patent medicines, and had, as apprentice, Ambrose Johns, the eminent local landscape painter, and friend of Turner.
Brooking-Rowe received a good classical education at a private school in his native town, and was afterwards articled to a firm of solicitors in Plymouth. At the ex- piration of his articles he went to London, and was with a conveyancing barrister there for twelve months. Subsequently he practised in Plymouth, at first alone, afterwards with Mr. Francis Bulteel, and still later with Mr. W. L. Munday.
As it has been suggested, Brooking-Rowe was born amongst books, and from boyhood he was a great reader and diligent student. Blessed with a very retentive memory, and a large and constantly augmenting library, the art of writing readily, on scientific and literary subjects, presented few technical difficulties to him. He wrote on a variety of subjects, each one of which he had well mastered.
His first published work was on The Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, and Amphibions of Devon, the reprint of a paper read before the Plymouth Institution in 1862, the year in which he assisted in the formation of the Devonshire Association. About this time he wrote A Fauna of Devon. In 1865 he wrote in Clack, the organ of a small club re- joicing in that name (the members including Spence Bate, Brooking-Rowe, Erskine Risk, John Shelly, James Hine), on the "Bears of Devon" and on the " Rear-Mice, or Bats of Devon "; but, as showing the versatility of his talent, he wrote in the same publication a pathetic Devonshire story entitled, "The Dying Farmer's Threat."
It was a great change from bears and bats to archaeology and history, but he was quite equal to it, and though his fame as an author (how little he thought of that!) may chiefly rest on larger works, such as his Ecclesiastical History of Plymouth, the Plympton Erle History, and the Cistercian Houses of Devon, yet the numerous papers with which he enriched the volumes of the Devonshire Association, from first to last, will be handed down to posterity, and bring honour to his memory.
For the Crediton Meeting of the Devonshire Association, in 1882, Mr. Brooking-Rowe was most appropriately chosen President, his uncle, the Rev. Samuel Rowe, the author of the standard work on Dartmoor, having at one time been vicar of Crediton. The enlarged and complete edition of Dartmoor was already in course of preparation.
Of the laborious secretarial duties of our departed friend, jointly undertaken for several years with Mr. Maxwell Adams, the Association have the most grateful remembrance.
Mr. Brooking-Rowe was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Linnean Society, and was in frequent correspondence with both Societies. His likeness is in one of the rooms of the latter.
He was a member of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, of the Somerset Archaeological Society, and was an hon. member of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.
He was a member of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society, and was in touch with the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings.
Brooking-Rowe was for twenty-six years churchwarden of Plympton St. Maurice, Devon, and did much for the restoration and adornment of his parish church.
He passed away on the second Sunday after Trinity, this year, and on the following Wednesday, 1 July, His remains were borne to their last resting-place by the members of the Parish Council, of which he had been Chairman.
A violet pall, the emblem of spring, covered the plain coffin, and over the pall was laid a large cross of white flowers, the emblem of his life-long and final Hope.
Although our friend's life was one of almost continuous work, some portions of his work were left unfinished. He had been engaged, it is understood, for a long time on a history of Plympton St. Mary and the Priory, and it is known that he contemplated a revised and enlarged edition of his Ecclesiastical History of Old Plymouth.
How true the words of Shakespeare: —

We are old, and on our quickest decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals, ere we can effect them.