Herbert Weld Blundell

Herbert Joseph Weld Blundell (1852-1935) was an English traveller in Africa, archaeologist, philanthropist and yachtsman. He shortened his surname from Weld Blundell to Weld, in 1924.

Life to 1922

He was educated at Stonyhurst College. He travelled to Persia in 1891, then for a decade 1894 to 1905 in North Africa and East Africa. [ [http://www.achemenet.com/ressources/souspresse/annonces/Simpson%5B1%5D.Bushire.pdf St John Simpson, Bushire and Beyond: Some Early Archaeological Discoveries in Iran (PDF), p. 12] .] He was a correspondent for the "Morning Post" during the Second Boer War. [Wright, p. 70.] Expeditions included

*1891-2 Persepolis, with Lorenzo Giuntini, making casts of the reliefs [http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/forgottenempire/palaces/reliefs.html]
*1894-5 Libya and Cyrenaica, creating a photographic record [Donald M. Bailey. "Photographs of Libya", 2. Libyan Studies: Volume 27 (1996), pp. 67-70.] [Herbert Weld-Blundell, "A visit to Cyrene in 1895", Annu. Brit Sch. Athens, 2, 1906, pp. 113-140.]
*1898 Abyssinia Expedition with Lord Lovat and Reginald Koettlitz [ http://www.dover.gov.uk/museum/focus/focus1.asp] http://www.anglo-ethiopian.org/publications/articles.php?type=O&reference=publications/occasionalpapers/papers/europeansbluenile.php]
*1904-5 Around Addis Ababa
*1922 Weld Blundell Expedition, found the Weld Blundell prism, now in the Ashmolean Museum [http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/faqs/q001/] [http://www.bible-history.com/archaeology/assyria/weld-prism.html]

In 1921-1922 he presented the Weld Blundell Collection to the University of Oxford. [http://cdli.ucla.edu/collections/ashmolean/ashmolean_intro.html]

From 1923

He backed a 1923 expedition to the Yemen [http://www.myjacobfamily.com/favershamjacobs/haroldfentonjacob.htm] , and the Field Museum-Oxford University Joint Expedition to Mesopotamia (Kish). [http://www.archive.org/stream/fieldmuseumnews06fiel/fieldmuseumnews06fiel_djvu.txt]

In 1923 he married Theodora Mclaren-Morrison, who died in 1928. In the same year he inherited Lulworth Castle, from a cousin, Reginald Joseph Weld Blundell. In 1928, on the death of Reginald's brother Humphrey, he inherited the rest of the Lulworth Estate, of the Weld-Blundell family. [Wright, p. 69.]

In 1923 he started campaigning against Army use of Bindon Hill as a firing range, the beginning of the long conflict that centred on the fate of Tyneham and other parts of the Lulworth Estate. [Wright, p. 75.] From 1924 he owned a large yacht, S/Y "Lulworth". [http://www.lulworth.nl/pages.php?id=1014] It was a prominent racing craft of its time, competing 28 times in 1925 and always placing in the first three. [http://www.lulworth.nl/pages.php?id=1015]

In 1929 he sold the Luttrell Psalter to the British Museum, which purchased it with a loan from John Pierpont Morgan. [http://www.artfund.org/artwork/787/the-luttrell-psalter] Weld's intention to sell family heirlooms came up against a legal issue, the claims of Mary Angela Noyes, nee Mayne, wife of Alfred Noyes, earlier married to Richard Shireburn Weld-Blundell, the Weld-Blundell heir who had been killed in 1916. [http://www.thepeerage.com/p4558.htm#i45579] [http://www.thepeerage.com/p4558.htm#i45578] [Wright, pp. 114-5.] Later in 1929 Lulworth Castle was badly damaged by fire, and some of the disputed heirlooms were burned. [Wright, p. 116, pp. 119-120.]

Works

*"The Royal Chronicle of Abyssinia, 1769-1840, with Translation and Notes" (1922)

References

*Patrick Wright (2002 revision), "The Village That Died for England"

Notes