Concept

William Grainge

Summary
William Grainge (25 January 1818 – 29 September 1895) was an English antiquarian and poet, and a historian of Yorkshire. He was born into a farming family in Dishforth and grew up on Castiles Farm near Kirkby Malzeard in the North Riding of Yorkshire, where he studied the archaeological site beneath the farm buildings, now known as Cast Hills settlement. Although he left school at age 12, he educated himself well enough to become a clerk to a solicitors' firm in Boroughbridge. He later established a bookshop in Harrogate and published numerous books on local history and topography, besides publishing a number of anonymous poems and discourses about local natural history. Grainge befriended the young John Farrah, and taught him botany and other natural history. Farrah was a grocer and an amateur botanist, who went on to become a Fellow of The Linnean Society and chairman of Yorkshire Naturalists' Union. After Grainge died, Farrah gave a lecture about Grainge's life and works, and later wrote a tribute to him. Most of what we know about Grainge's life comes from Farrah. On Monday 2 December 1895, soon after William Grainge died, the Harrogate Field Naturalists' and Camera Club met to hear a lecture by their past president, Yorkshire naturalist John Farrah (1849–1907), about the man's life and career. Farrah said that although Grainge was born at Dishforth on 25 January 1818 his parents (farmer Thomas Grainge (c.1771 – Stokesley 1841 or 1845) and Elizabeth Chapman (Hutton Rudby c.1778 – Ripon 1867)) had taken over the family property, Castiles Farm near Kirkby Malzeard, by the following March. Grainge was the youngest heir of that family, and Castiles was where he grew up, and where his once-yeoman family had farmed for three centuries. Grainge attended Kirkby Malzeard village school, leaving at age 12 to work on the farm for fifteen years. He was otherwise self-taught. While working "he employed every moment of his leisure time gathering scientific knowledge". He would carry pocket volumes of Dove's Classics; "when those around him rested or slept, he read".
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