Richly illustrated, handwritten journal of British botanist and archaeologist Henry Ecroyd Smith (1823-1889), describing his 3-week trip through North Yorkshire and Durham in the summer of 1861. During this trip, he visited the ruins of numerous abbeys in the region, like Fountains Abbey, Byland Abbey, and Rievaulx Abbey, and describes their architecture. He mentions interesting historical facts about them, as well as relevant local legends, songs or poems. He also corrects misinformation from earlier authors and has added illustrations of most of the abbeys, which were taken from newspapers and other works. The journal reads like a walking guide, as it explains which routes to take. Smith has published multiple works on Roman and Anglo-Saxon architecture and possibly undertook this trip as research for a future work.
Smith is a relatively unknown British scholar. He was the first curator of the Liverpool museum and the author of several works on architecture in England. Most notably, Reliquiae Isurianae: the remains of the Roman Isurium (1852), about a Roman fort in North Yorkshire. He also wrote two works on archaeology in the Mersey district (1868 and 1874), Annals of Smith of Cantley (1878), which is the history of his family, and The history of Conisborough castles with glimpses of Ivanhoe-Land (1887). The present journal offers a unique insight into 19th-century tourism and the state of the visited abbeys around this time.
With the bookplate of Henry Ecroyd Smith mounted on the front pastedown. The edges and corners of the boards are scuffed and the front and back board are somewhat scratched, the work has been rebacked. The endpapers have been reinforced in the gutter with grey book cloth. The title-page, final few leaves and some of the added illustrations are slightly foxed, the work is slightly browned throughout, the folding map has remnants of tape on the back and a small tear in the inner margin, slightly affecting the image, with remnants of newspaper clippings on pages 37 and 53, missing the (probably blank) leaf with pages 54-55. Otherwise in good condition. Cf. BM, General catalogue 23, p. 786-379 (Smith's other works).