William Greenwell was born 23 March 1820 at the estate known as Greenwell Ford near Lanchester, County Durham, England. He was the eldest son of William Thomas Greenwell and Dorothy Smales. He had three brothers Francis, Alan, and Henry Nicholas Greenwell, and a sister Dorothy who published poetry under the name Dora Greenwell. After an early education by Rev George Newby, he attended Durham School. One of his schoolmates was Henry Baker Tristram. He matriculated at University College, Durham in October 1836 and graduated Bachelor of Arts in June 1839. He started training to be a barrister at Middle Temple, but owing to ill health decided to leave London and return to University College in 1841, completing a licentiate in Theology in 1842. He received a Master of Arts in 1843. Greenwell was ordained a deacon by Bishop Edward Maltby 30 June 1844 and priest 28 June 1846. He was bursar of University College in Durham from 1844 to 1847.
Archaeology
His family estate included the site of the ancient Roman fort Longovicium. As a child he and his brother Frank would scoop out soil covering the camp, leading to his interest in archaeology. He was a founding member of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club in 1846, and later that year toured Germany and Italy. In August 1852 he presented a paper at an Archaeological Institute there. In March 1864 he excavated fourteen barrows at Danes Graves a site of the Arras Culture of the British Iron Age and was subsequently criticised by William Harrison-Broadley for his poor excavation technique. Greenwell undertook a large-scale excavation of 53 barrows at Danes Graves with John Robert Mortimer between 1897–98. Greenwell is also noted for his work on the Grimes Graves along with his treatises on electrum coinage of Cyzicus, and cataloguing of the Late Bronze Age finds from Heathery Burn Cave. Greenwell's enormous collection of antiquities, many of which date from the Neolithic or Bronze Age period in Britain, is now in the British Museum. This was thanks to the generosity of J. P. Morgan, who bought them for £10,000. In 1895 he sold his collections of flint implements to Dr W. Allan Sturge, formerly of Nice. His earliest collection of note was Greek coins, which he eventually sold to a Mr. Warren of Boston, Massachusetts, with Warren later donating it to the Boston Museum. One of his students was Augustus Pitt Rivers. With the money made from selling his collections he was able to repurchase his ancestral home, Greenwell Ford, which was then inherited by his nephew after his death.
Known in Durham as 'The Canon', he had a reputation for being bluff and plain-spoken. Greenwell was a Liberal in politics, and in religion a Tractarian who in later life retreated to more conservative high-churchmanship. His fishing and hunting skills developed in early childhood on the River Browney and he remained a keen angler to his ninety-eighth year. As an outdoorsman keen on angling and shooting, his sporting instincts made him naturally sympathetic to poachers. When a poacher was brought for trial in Durham both the police and the defendant, with differing motives, would inquire whether Greenwell would be on the bench. He is known as originator of "Greenwell's Glory", used in fly fishing.
Works
With a translation, an appendix of original documents, and a glossary.
Together with description of figures of skulls, general remarks on prehistoric crania, and an appendix by George Rolleston.
