Stamford historian John Smith launches book about William Stukeley, vicar of All Saints

Illustrations of some of Stamford’s long-lost buildings as they were almost 300 years ago have been unearthed and published in a new book.

The drawings by former vicar of All Saints Church in Stamford, William Stukeley, were found in a leather-bound volume on the shelves of the Stamford Mercury Archive.

Many of the buildings he drew have since been destroyed.

The book, Stukeley and Stamford Part II: tribulations of an antiquarian clergyman, is by founder member of the Stamford Mercury Archive Trust, John Smith, and was launched at Stamford Town Hall on Thursday last week.

The book includes accounts of bribery and corruption in Stamford during the general election of 1734, and some of the difficulties Stukeley encountered as a governor of the Browne’s Hospital almshouse in Broad Street.

Both the new volume by Mr Smith, and Stukeley and Stamford, Part I: Cakes and Curiosity: the Sociable Antiquarian, 1710-1737, which was written by Diana and Michael Honeybone, are published by Lincoln Record Society.

Presiding over the launch of the second volume was mayor of Stamford Andy Croft.