Wallace Thorneycroft
Scottish mining engineer and expert on vitrified forts
- Lived
- 1864–1954
- Profession
- Mining engineer and colliery owner (Plean, Lochgelly and others)
- Office
- President of the Institute of Mining Engineers
- Honor
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1907)
- Known for
- 1937 vitrification experiment with V. Gordon Childe
The colliery owner and amateur archaeologist who helped V. Gordon Childe burn a test wall in 1937 to recreate a vitrified fort.
What is Wallace Thorneycroft known for?
Wallace Thorneycroft (1864–1954) was a mining engineer and businessman who managed and owned several Scottish coal mines, including Plean Colliery near Stirling, and served as president of the Institute of Mining Engineers. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1907.
He was also a keen antiquarian and an expert on vitrified forts, the Iron Age hillforts whose stone walls have been partly melted into glass. He was one of the first to test experimentally how they were made.
In 1937, with the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, he built a timber-laced stone wall at Plean Colliery and set it alight. The fire produced genuine vitrification. They published their results in 1938 in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, showing that ordinary large fires could explain the forts.
He co-ran the 1937 experiment that recreated vitrification with an ordinary fire.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeVitrified forts
- PersonV. Gordon Childe
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Wallace Thorneycroft'Reference
- Childe and Thorneycroft, 'The Experimental Production of the Phenomena Distinctive of Vitrified Forts', Proc. Soc. Antiquaries of Scotland 72 (1938)Primary text
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