LIGHTHOUSE OF WISDOM
Very soon a new and colourful character entered the life of the Tower: Sir Thomas Phillipps. Sir Thomas, in his own eccentric way, began the building’s reputation as a place to give birth to pioneering and innovative thinking.
The stencilled crest, spine numbering and hand-numbering identifying books in Sir Thomas’s extensive collection.
Born in 1792, the young Thomas Phillipps had moved to the nearby Middle Hill with his father in 1796. By the age of 6 years he had spent all his pocket money on a collection of 110 books. This was to presage an obsession with collecting books and manuscripts, which consumed his wealth, but gave Broadway Tower a unique place in national and international scholarship.
In 1818 Sir Thomas’s father died, leaving his son the estate and a handsome annual income of £6,000 (approximately £525,700 today), and by 1822 he had used this to establish a private printing press at Broadway Tower, where he would copy, commission and print transcripts of historical documents.
Like the 6th Earl before him, Sir Thomas was a graduate of University College, Oxford, and he used his learning and substantial fortune to buy books. His massive collection (quite possibly the largest ever amassed by one individual) amounted to approximately 50,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts of staggering diversity. Sadly, despite the vastness and range, he never achieved his stated ambition: “to have one copy of every Book in the World!”
Most of Sir Thomas’s manuscripts had never been published, and he was very willing to share his obsession and scholarship with others. He issued printed versions of manuscripts and catalogues of his collection, freely distributing them to libraries. The enterprise was known as the “Middle Hill Press”, and its productions often appeared with a vignette of Broadway Tower on the title page.
Sir Thomas was a generous host, entertaining scholars from around the globe to study his manuscripts at Middle Hill. One French scholar wrote enthusiastically: “Broadway Tower is like a lighthouse, signalling to the friends of letters that a hospitable roof exists, under which all pilgrims of learning are made welcome.”
Title page from a Thomas Phillipps publication featuring the Tower.