Did you know Brislington has its very own dinosaur vicar? No, it is not our dear Guy Wilkinson. It is the Revd William Daniel Conybeare (1787-1857), who was Resident Curate of St Luke’s from 1819 to 1826. During his time in Brislington he lived at Gotley Lodge, which still stands in Water Lane, and three of his seven children were born here and christened at St Luke’s. His grandfather, John Conybeare (1692-1755), was Bishop of Bristol from 1750 to 1755.
Revd Conybeare was one of the earliest palaeontologists and produced groundbreaking work on fossils and excavation, more than twenty years before the word “dinosaur” (“terrible lizard”) was first coined in 1842. Conybeare was a founder of the Bristol Philosophical Society in 1822 at Park Street (now Freemasons’ Hall), a forerunner of Bristol Museum. He was also an early member of the Geological Society, founded in 1807 and the oldest geological society in the world.
In 1822 he published Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, a work that had a major influence on the development of geology. Much of his reputation was established while he was living in Brislington.
During his time in Brislington, Conybeare became interested in the reptilian bones often discovered in the Liassic rocks of Somerset. In 1823, the fossil hunter Mary Anning (1799-1847), who was portrayed in the 2020 film Ammonite and with whom Conybeare corresponded, discovered at Lyme Regis the fossilised skeleton of a plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile from the Triassic period more than 250 million years ago.
News of the discovery reached Conybeare in Brislington and he wrote to a friend:
“It was the evening of the meeting of our Philosophical Society and you may imagine the fuss this occasioned. My sermon, though finished in scraps, was not then half transcribed, but one of my sisters-in-law who was staying with me kindly undertook that task, and to the Society I went, delighted to pay that infant nursing the compliment of making this strange monster first known to the public through its means.”
A week later Conybeare lectured on the discovery in London. He named the creature Ichthyosaurus and argued that it showed a connection with the crocodile. In 1824 he published Notice of a Discovery of a New Fossil Animal Forming a Link Between the Ichthyosaurus and the Crocodile. The name Ichthyosaurus is Greek for “fish lizard”.
Sadly, Conybeare did not give Mary Anning the credit she deserved for her part in the discovery.
These discoveries of previously unknown extinct creatures preserved within rock strata brought science and religion into conflict. An Earth created in seven days now seemed increasingly doubtful. The findings suggested that higher forms of life might have emerged from lower forms, potentially challenging the belief that humanity was created directly by God in His own image. Conybeare was perplexed and outraged by such ideas, denouncing them as “monstrous” and struggling to reconcile scientific discovery with the Bible.
Conybeare also researched the geology of Ireland, the South Wales coalfields, and was among the first to study volcanoes while visiting Tenerife. From 1845 until his death he served as Dean of Llandaff Cathedral.
He died in 1857, aged 70, at the home of his son, the Revd Charles Ranken Conybeare, vicar of St Mary’s, Itchen Stoke, Hampshire.
Another son born in Brislington was Henry Conybeare (1823-1892), a noted civil engineer and Gothic Revival architect. He was responsible for creating Bombay’s first piped water supply and elements of his waterworks system are still in use in present-day Mumbai.
Jonathan Rowe, 2026
