Henry Woods, 1868-1952

Abstract

Henry Woods, who died on 4 April 1952, was the youngest member and last survivor of that famous trio, Marr, Harker and Woods, to whom the geological school at Cambridge during the first quarter of the present century owed so much. He was born on 18 December 1868, at Cottenham, a village some six miles from Cambridge, where his father, Francis Woods, owned and farmed land which had been in the family’s possession since the end of the eighteenth century. His grandfather, also Francis Woods, had been admitted to a copy- hold of the Rectory Manor in 1799, and his name appears as one of the Trustees on a tablet in the wall of some almshouses in Cottenham, erected under Moreton’s Charity. It is believed, however, that the Woods family came originally from Huntingdonshire. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of another Cambridgeshire farmer, Thomas Granger, of Haddenham, who had married Molly Dowsing Norman, of Cottenham; whether this lady was connected in any way with the famous iconoclast of East Anglia is perhaps doubtful. Henry was the only child of this, his father’s second marriage. Of his early life, little is known except that Henry was a quiet, studious child who was devoted to his mother. On the death of his father, which occurred when Henry was only two years old, they were apparently left rather poorly provided. While they remained in Cottenham, Henry attended the local village school; the headmaster at that time, a Mr William Martin, is still remembered as a quite exceptional man, who no doubt had a stimulating influence on young Woods. In 1880, they moved into Cambridge, and Henry became a pupil at the Higher Grade School, now the Central School for Boys, winning a succession of general prizes and in 1883 a Science Scholarship (Science and Art Department). It was here that he first met the Brock brothers, one of whom (C.E.) achieved general recognition as an illustrator and portrait painter, and another of whom (T.A.) contributed the admirable plates accompanying most of Woods’s descriptive palaeontology. Tams, the photographer, was another of his Cambridge school-fellows.