George Clementson Greenwell
George Clementson Greenwell (1821-1900)
1860 Birth of son Allan Greenwell
Died 1900 aged 80.[1]
1901 Obituary [2] GEORGE CLEMENTSON GREENWELL, born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 25th July, 1821, was educated first at Darlington Grammar School, then at Percy Street Academy, Newcastle, under the Rev. John Collingwood Bruce, and afterwards at Edinburgh University.
At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to the late Mr. Thomas Emerson Forster, the well-known Mining Engineer, for four years.
On the expiration of his apprenticeship he was employed by Mr. Forster at Haswell Colliery until early in 1843, and during the following two years he was engaged in visiting various collieries, in making surveys, and in gaining general mining experience.
In January, 1845, Mr. Greenwell was appointed Resident Viewer in charge of the Black Boy and West Auckland Collieries in the county of Durham, under Mr. Forster. There he remained till 1848, when he was appointed Viewer at the Marley Hill Collieries in the county of Durham, belonging to Messrs. John Bowes and Partners. He continued in charge of those collieries until 1853, when he was placed in sole charge of the Radstock Collieries, Somerset, belonging to the Countess of Waldegrave.
He remained at Radstock till 1863, when he removed to Poynton in Cheshire, where he acted as Agent and Manager of Lord Vernon’s Poynton and Worth Collieries until the end of 1876.
After that date, Mr. Greenwell practised as a Consulting Mining Engineer, residing first at Tynemouth, and afterwards at Elm Tree Lodge, Duffield, near Derby, where he died on the 6th November, 1900.
Mr. Greenwell held a high position as a Mining Engineer, and was consulted in his professional capacity in all parts of the kingdom. In the year 1849, when 28 years of age, he compiled and published "A Glossary of terms used in the Coal Trade of Northumberland and Durham," and in the same year, at the request of the Newcastle College of Practical Science, he gave a series of lectures on mining, which formed the nucleus of a book, published in 1850, entitled, “A Practical Treatise on Mine Engineering.” This book, of which a second edition was published in 1869, became a standard work on mining.
Mr. Greenwell was one of the founders in 1852 of the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers, of which he was President from 1879 to 1881; and as a recognition of his long connection with that Society, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Institution of Mining Engineers in 1899. He was also a Follow of the Geological Society of London, and a Member of the Manchester Geological Society, of which he was three times President.
He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on the 1st February, 1870.