CLARKE, William Barnard
William Barnard Clarke was born at Shakespeare House, Falcon Street, Ipswich in 1807 and baptised at Hollesley, Suffolk on 7 July the same year, eldest son of William Barnard Clarke (1754-18 May 1833), bailiff of Ipswich, and his wife Susan Conder (1772-13 May 1856), daughter of Thomas Conder, an Ipswich leather-cutter, and widow of Pastor Lloyd by whom she had three children, who married at Hollesley, Suffolk on 12 February 1804. Young William was educated at Ipswich grammar school and at Edinburgh University graduating MD in 1834. Dr Clarke practised at Ipswich, North Shields and at Walton-on-Naze, Essex before leaving Essex to become the first curator at the new Ipswich Museum being elected on 26 December 1846, with the museum opening on 15 December 1847. In 1850, Clarke was living at 14 Berners Street, Ipswich when an exhibitor at the first exhibition of the Suffolk Fine Arts Association at the New Lecture Hall of the Mechanics' Institute, Ipswich in October 1850, when he had on show 'Water Mill in Heaton Vale, Northumberland' and 'Temporary Bridge erected in 1847...Stoke Bridge'. In 1850, on the death of museum president William Kirby, he resigned as curator but continued his practice as a physician but saddened by the death of his mother, Susan, who died in 1856 and his only child, William Barnard, who died June 1856, aged 19, he went to Wakefield and into partnership with a Dr Greenhow however he must have maintained contact with Ipswich as he exhibited at the Ipswich Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition in 1868 his work receiving a Certificate of Merit. William Barnard Clarke retired to Fairy Cottage, Nostell, near Wakefield where he died on 20 March 1894. aged 87. He married at St Margaret's Church, Ipswich on 18 September 1834, Maria Jennings, youngest daughter of William David Jennings of Doctors' Court, London, Maria died at Halifax, Wherstead Road, Ipswich on 19 April 1870, aged 66. A contributor, author, and editor of the Magazine of Natural History. (Copsey-Suffolk Writer 1800-1900. (2002)
Royal Academy Exhibits
from 9 Chapel Street, Bedford Row, London
1832 1043 Design for the Proposed Botanical Garden on Primrose Hill
1835 966 Waltham Cross Restored...in the reign of Edward the First