ERO Presents: The Disney Family and Essex

Speaker: Professor David Gill

Dr John Disney (1779–1857), best known for the benefaction of the chair of archaeology at the University of Cambridge, lived at The Hyde near Ingatestone. The Disney family originally settled at Norton Disney in Lincolnshire. In 1775 Disney’s uncle Lewis married Elizabeth Ffytche of Danbury Place in Essex, and in 1802 their daughter Sophia married her cousin Dr Disney: her sister Frances had married Sir William Hillary, the future founder of the RNLI, in 1800. Disney’s father, the Reverend John Disney, inherited The Hyde as well as its collection of classical sculpture in 1804 from Thomas Brand-Hollis, a benefactor of Essex Hall, a Unitarian chapel in London. The Reverend Disney prepared a catalogue of the art-work in The Hyde (1807) that was followed by an illustrated description of the antiquities in the Museum Disneianum by Dr Disney in 1846. Dr Disney was a key member of the Chelmsford Philosophical Society and helped to establish the Chelmsford Museum that opened in 1843, as well as the Essex Archaeological Society.

Professor David Gill is Honorary Professor in the Centre for Heritage at the University of Kent, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia. He is a former curator in the Department of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. He received the Outstanding Public Service Award from the Archaeological Institute of America for his research on cultural property. His biography of Dr John Disney was published in 2020.

Please visit https://www.essexrecordoffice.co.uk/visit-us/ for details of our nearest public car parks.

Host or Publisher Essex Record Office