Talk:Richard Towneley

Initial post
The article as current from December 2007 contains numerous errors and relies too heavily on the Westfall note, now incorporated into the Galileo Project. The Westfall note itself is mainly based on Charles Webster's 'Richard Towneley, 1629-1707, and the Towneley Group', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. 118, 1966.

Apart from a link to the Christopher and Richard Towneley papers in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, the article ignores important primary sources, particularly Richard Towneley's published letters to the Royal Society and an account of Towneley's work by Charles Leigh in The Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak, in Derbyshire, published in 1700.

The main complaint concerns the claim that Towneley started his rainfall measurements in order to measure the success of the process of hushing. There is not a shred of evidence to support this idea, which was first advocated by Titus Thornber in his History of Cliviger. Thornber was probably the first person to research the lime hushings of the Sheddon Valley and he made two tentative suggestions, (a) that Richard Towneley (1629-1707) was possibly responsible for starting the hushing process in Cliviger, (b) if he was, the he might have made his rainfall measurements in support of that process. In fact, hushing was taking place in nearby Briercliffe long before the Civil War, when the Townleys of Royle were involved in diverting a stream away from Colne and into Marsden. If Thornber was right in linking RT with the hushing process, it would be a big blot on RT's environmental credentials as hushing created many problems both for the environment and those people who lived farther down the valley.

This article rightly mentions the use of reservoirs to divert water for the hushing process and if RT had wanted to measure the process it would seem much more sensible to measure the level of the resevoir. Actually, the article is also wrong in claiming RT was the first person in England to measure and keep records of rainfall. Robert Hooke made daily records of temperature and rainfall in London in 1664. Christopher Wren invented an automatic raingage. What we do know about the area of Burnley is that it is subject to much more rainfall than most other places in England.

Richard started making regular rainfall measurements at Towneley in January 1677. He wanted evidence that rainfall varied from place to place and to confirm his guess as why it rained so much at Towneley. He rightly believed it was due to clouds being driven by South and S. W. winds meeting the high grounds in East Lancashire. It was many years before he could get anyone else to make similar records elsewhere in England to compare. He reported the results of fifteen years to the Royal Society in January 1694, explaining his reasoning. So it is right to claim that RT was the first person in England to create long term rainfall records but it has nothing to do with lime hushing. JoshuaRaw (talk) 17:35, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


 * That's fine but you need to put the alternative view in the article rather than remove large blocks of text see Neutral point of view. I've left a message on your talk page. Richerman (talk) 20:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Another Richard Townley
Any relation to this Richard Townley? -- &oelig; &trade; 05:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

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