Churchill Babington

Who was Churchill Babington?

Churchill Babington was an English classical scholar, archaeologist and naturalist, born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire.

He was first educated by his father, Matthew Drake Babington, and then studied under Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, the orientalist and archaeologist, entering St John's College, Cambridge in 1839 and graduating in 1843, seventh in the first class of the classical tripos and a senior optime. In 1845 he obtained the Hulsean Prize for his essay The Influence of Christianity in promoting the Abolition of Slavery in Europe. In 1846 he was elected to a fellowship and took orders. He proceeded to the degree of M.A. in 1846 and D.D. in 1879. From 1848 to 1861 he was vicar of Horningsea, near Cambridge, and from 1866 to his death he was vicar of Cockfield in Suffolk. From 1865 to 1880 he held the Disney professorship of archaeology at Cambridge. In his lectures, illustrated from his own collections of coins and vases, he dealt chiefly with Greek and Ancient Roman pottery and numismatics.

Babington wrote on a variety of subjects. His early familiarity with country life gave him a taste for natural history, especially botany and ornithology. He was also an authority on conchology. He was the author of the appendices on botany and ornithology in Potter's History and Antiquities of Charnwood Forest. In 1853, he was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society.