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Herald History: How mummies from ancient Egypt came to be buried beneath Tamworth
| Posted: September 06, 2015
As Tamworth Library prepares to host a photographic exhibition on Egyptian artefacts once collected by a town vicar, historian John Harper tells a remarkable tale...
THE story of the Rev William MacGregor's Egyptian mummies is surely one of the most enduring tales of old Tamworth.
But why, when they had been entombed in the warm Egyptian sand 'for eternity', did the town's former vicar bring ancient mummified bodies thousands of miles to Tamworth – and then bury them in his back garden?
Well, the 3,000 year-old mummies were not actually buried by Rev MacGregor, but by my great-grandfather (on my mother's side), George Clarkson Higginson.
He was Rev MacGregor's gardener. I have a 1917 dairy of his in which he notes the weather conditions and various horticultural details.
My great-grandfather lived in MacGregor Cottages, a row of houses standing in the grounds of Mr MacGregor's home
, Bolehall Manor. My mother was born there.
The cottages were demolished to create a car park at the Manor when it became a private club.
Most readers will be aware of Rev MacGregor's incredible contribution to the life of Tamworth, but it may surprise some to know that his name still today is well-known and revered in academic circles, particularly at the British Museum's Egyptology department, where he is regarded as one of the foremost collectors of Egyptology of his age.
Indeed, so vast was his collection that he built a museum at his Tamworth home, now Bolehall Manor Club, to display the thousands of artefacts he brought back from Egypt.
Then, in 1922, he surprised everyone when he decided to sell the lot at Sotheby's, the great Bond Street galleries in London.
This was the year when Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen's tomb, and the ancient world of Egyptology flashed upon the world's consciousness.
The sale was expected to take nine days and an introduction in the sale catalogue says: "The remarkable collection of Egyptian Antiquities by the Rev William MacGregor is unparalleled in any other private collection in England, Europe or America".
The total sum raised was £34,000 – a huge amount at the time.
But why did Rev MacGregor sell it?
To answer that, we need to know something of the man himself.
Rev William MacGregor was born in Liverpool on May 16, 1848, son of Walter Fergus MacGregor and Anne Jane Moon.
He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, obtaining a BA in 1871 and an MA in 1874.
Choosing to join the ministry, he served in Liverpool before coming to Tamworth as curate in 1876.
He became a great admirer and apostle of Tamworth's then Vicar, Rev Brooke Lambert, and he liked Tamworth so much that when the position of vicar came up two years later he managed to get it – and remained here for the rest of his life.
Although he resigned as vicar in 1887 – his support of the Co-operative movement made him enemies among the town's shopkeepers – he devoted the remainder of his life to serving on innumerable committees and boards and doing good deeds.
Local schools, hospitals, social organisations and youth groups all benefited from his largesse.
Among the other good works he did for Tamworth was working for the poor and wretched during typhoid and cholera outbreaks.
Inevitably, he caught fever himself and suffered from a prolonged illness.
In those days there were no drugs available to treat his damaged lungs, and so he was sent to recuperate in the warm, dry air of Egypt.
He arrived there when the first tombs of the pharaohs were being opened up, and was immediately gripped by the fascinating discoveries being made.
He was intoxicated by Egypt and its ancient artefacts, which he felt should be preserved and studied to learn more about the 'land of the pharaohs'.
He paid two curates to carry out his work in the winter months, and year after year he returned to Egypt and joined in the archaeological work being done there.
Many important objects discovered at Nagada, Abydos, Reqaqnah, Beni Hasan and in the ruins of the Royal City of Meroë in the Sudan, came into his possession.
For several years he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Egyptian excavations carried out by the renowned archaeologist, Professor John Garstang.
From the cliff tombs and mausoleums of the land, small narrow gauge railways carried trucks of the buried treasures of this lost civilisation to dealers of many nations gathered on the coast.
There were so many mummies lying about that they were sometimes used as fuel to stoke the engines!
But Rev MacGregor made a careful selection and had the objects he desired shipped to his Tamworth home.
He had been an ordinary, well-off young man, but now he began to spend much of his money on the town he had adopted.
He had already offered to buy the town a hospital, to which the townsfolk contributed, and gave land for a new school on Glascote Road, which now bears his name.
He built Glascote Church, St George's, and gave Bolehall Park for youngsters to play in.
We shall never know the full extent of his generosity, because his gifts were mostly anonymous, and he believed in campaigning and teaching, as well as giving.
So why sell his collection?
He was unmarried, but loved children, and had several nieces and nephews to whom he had bequeathed his money.
He had ambitions for his adoptive town, and a generous donation does wonders to oil the wheels in many of the committees he enriched with his advice.
He sold his collection privately to a reputable dealer, keeping only a selection for his own.
The dealer offered the sale to Sotheby's as 'The MacGregor Collection'.
He must have been amazed at the prices some of the articles fetched!
Notable was the obsidian head of a 12th dynasty king, Amenemmes III, which went for £10,000 and today is in the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
There was some beautiful jewellery, including a girdle of 1,400 beads, a fine blue faience chalice, a model in the same of a hippopotamus on his hind legs, and a marvellous collection of scarabs.
Much of the collection went to the British Museum, who unfortunately could not afford some of the pricier pieces, whereas other pieces went to all the great art houses, as well as private antiquaries.
But back in Tamworth Mr MacGregor found that some of the mummies he had brought home were beginning to make their presence felt in our damp climate – by 'going off'.
And so he decided to find suitable homes for them.
Two were decently interred by my great-grandfather in rear gardens near the River Anker which borders MacGregor's house.
Two others were interred in foundations beneath the Palace Cinema in George Street, which was being redeveloped at the time.
Apparently, the exposed foundations reminded him of the tombs he had seen in Egypt. The site went on to be a McDonald's restaurant, and is now a Costa coffee shop.
Perhaps the most well-known artefact to be seen locally is an Egyptian stela (grave marker) mounted in the entrance hall of Bolehall Manor.
It is inscribed with a prayer for the after-life of the Lady Tasheritenihyt.
Sadly, Rev MacGregor himself has no memorial, and many of the buildings he gave to the town have been demolished.
He died at Bolehall Manor on February 26, 1936.
Perhaps one day the people of Tamworth will see fit to properly honour this great man whose earthly remains are buried in the churchyard at Hopwas, near the beautiful church he built.
Rev MacGregor never did explain why he sold his remarkable collection, but it is unlikely that it was for purely for financial reasons.
Perhaps the great philanthropist realised that he was nearing the end of his long life and wanted to secure the future of the precious artefacts before his work in this life was over.
If so, then he was successful – as he was in so many ways during his remarkable life in Tamworth.
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