Derby man produced definitive star atlas

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Britain’s first Astronomer Royal was a Derby man, John Flamsteed. Maxwell Craven examines his invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the universe.

Britain’s first Astronomer Royal was appointed by Charles II. There were hard-headed economics behind it – the necessity to improve and make safer maritime trade by discovering a method of determining longitude.

The marine chronometer was still a century away and navigation depended entirely on astronomy.

The King accepted the suggestion of courtier Sir Jonas Moore that the appointment should go to his protégé, the Rev John Flamsteed, at an annual salary of £100.

To house this man’s important work, Sir Christopher Wren designed the splendid Royal Observatory at Greenwich and it was fitted out with timepieces of incredible accuracy by Flamsteed’s friend, clockmaker Thomas Tompion.

Flamsteed’s first task was to make an accurate map of the heavens, for which he personally made the instruments required. Indeed, Flamsteed had made a 3ft quadrant, sundials and six barometers while still a youth in his father’s home, in Queen Street, Derby.

His father, Stephen Flamsteed, was a Derby merchant and maltster, himself the third son of William Flamsteed, of Little Hallam Hall, Ilkeston.

Flamsteed was, in fact, born in Denby, at a house now called Crowtrees, on August 19, 1646. His father, torn between close family connections with both sides in the Civil War, retired temporarily to a family property there until the dust settled. The family had a lot of property, with interests in both coal and lead mining as well as the business in Derby.

His mother, Mary Spateman – a member of a fanatical Parliamentary family – died when John was barely three and Stephen remarried in 1652. His new wife, Elizabeth, was by contract the daughter of the Royalist, Nathaniel Bate, of Little Chester.

Flamsteed was sent to Derby School but was withdrawn, ostensibly, after having caught a serious fever while bathing at “Lord Aston’s Baths by the river” – whatever they were! In reality, he was expected to keep house for his father.

But he continued to study astrology, then astronomy, and, encouraged by pioneer Immanuel Halton of Wingfield Manor, algebra.

Through him, he was introduced to the Royal Society in 1670, later becoming FRS, and gaining a place at Jesus College, Cambridge. After graduating, as a fall-back, he was ordained.

Even as early as 1669, Flamsteed had produced a set of Equation of Time, made tidal calculations, published a set of solar tables and written On Some Eclipses of the Fixed Stars by the Moon. He also worked out the co-ordinates – from St Mary’s Bridge – for a large-scale map of Derby, which survive in the Maritime Museum archives at Greenwich.

Once installed at Greenwich, he began his systematic mapping of the Heavens, aided by a group of close friends who made observations in the provinces.

Between September 1689 and 1703, for instance, he made more than 30,000 observations and measurements. But he was slow to publish, being a perfectionist. This led to a breach with the mercurial Isaac Newton, who did it without his permission in 1712, initiating a damaging life-long feud.

The job was a financial struggle. His salary, from which he had to provide instruments and pay assistants, was always in arrears. To support himself, he obtained the living of Burstow, Surrey. Then, on his father’s death in 1688, he inherited a property and business responsibilities in Derbyshire, which meant he had to regularly visit Derby, although he had agents who undertook their day-to-day running.

The inheritance also left him free to marry, which he did, in 1692, to Londoner Margaret Cooke, although they had no children.

Flamsteed died on New Year’s Eve 1719, but it was not until 1735 that his widow and nephew managed to publish his definitive star atlas, the Atlas Coelestis, along with two companion volumes, edited by two of his former assistants. Its clarity, accuracy and thoroughness, however, brought him great posthumous credit, rehabilitating a reputation which both Newton and Flamsteed’s successor, Edmund Halley, had done much to denigrate.

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