Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Allen, Lake

1799 - 1824

His father, Herbert Allen, was a hatter, who married Mary Taswell, the daughter of a surgeon and apothecary of Huguenot extraction. Her father refused to receive her after the marriage, but was, however, willing to see her son, Lake, who benefitted from his grandfather’s library and love of learning. His grandfather was also a role model, as in 1775 he had published anonymously The Portsmouth Guide, and 15 years later A New Portsmouth Guide. Similar works published at the turn of the century included in 1799 The Ancient and Modern History of Portesmouth [sic] by J. Watts (though Webb, in Hampshire Studies,1981, and Oldfield in Hampshire Paper 3, 1993, attribute it to Rev. R.H. Cumyns) and in 1801 The History of Portsmouth attributed to James Charles Mottley, bookseller and stationer.

In 1817 Allen published a 252-page History of Portsmouth, which was the first substantial work of its kind on the town. It also touched on Gosport, Portchester and the Isle of Wight. Well-written and professionally produced, it is mainly a collection of materials culled from standard works, no doubt in his grandfather’s library. Some passages cover local events, such as the beating of the water bounds of Portsmouth, with the mayor and others working a boat against tide and weather. Also conflicts between Corporation and Government in early 1700s. Appendices include transcripts of Latin charters, in one case with the help of ‘Mr Palmer, of the Rolls Chapel Office, London’. There are still elements of a guidebooks, with details of ‘posts, stage coaches, waggons’ and the like. In the preface he claims that ‘neither labour nor expense has been spared…[and]submits it with extreme diffidence…and shall feel obliged to any who may suggest improvements'.

In 1817 he also met a younger man with a scholarly bent, Frederic Madden (1801-1873), who shared his interests, though they also experienced meteoric fallings-out, as Webb (1981) details. At the time they were two teenagers with a wild variety of interests and no clear idea of career. Allen was articled to Portsmouth’s town clerk, Roger Calloway, which gave him access to municipal archives, which the two friends studied. Unfortunately, Callaway died suddenly in 1820 and Allen went off to London to study law at the Inner Temple. Whilst there he pursued his antiquarian interests in the British Museum and published four articles in the New Monthly Magazine on – of all subjects – chess in Europe in the 13th century!

In 1823, in poor health and the year before his death, Allen gave up the law and accepted a job from the keeper of the records in the Tower of London as a ‘professional transcriber’, at the rate of 13 pence a page. Within a year, Madden took up the same task, which launched him on his career’. He was to become Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, with a reputation as the supreme palaeographer of his day and eventually a knighthood.

Although Allen clearly had a ‘grasshopper mind’ and was probably intellectually less able than Madden, he might well had gone on to greater things.  

Sources

• John Webb, Young antiquaries: Lake Allen and Frederic Madden. In: J. Webb, N. Yates, and S. Peacock, eds., Hampshire Studies [a festshrift for Dorothy Dymond], Portsmouth City Records Office, 1981, 201-224.

• R.V. Turley, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Bibliographies, Winchester, 1975.

• J. Webb, S. Quail, R. C. Riley, P. Haskell, The Spirit of Portsmouth: A History, 1989.

• www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mottley-37#Biography.

• J. Oldfield, Printers, Booksellers and Libraries in Hampshire, 1750-1800, Hampshire Paper 3, Hampshire County Council, 1993.

• Tim Backhouse,  https://historyinportsmouth.co.uk/people/early-historians.htm

Portrait

None known.

Contribution to county’s history

He made a significant start to writing the history of Portsmouth and its district, taking it beyond its naval heritage.

Relevant published works

• Lake Allen, History of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, 1817; reprinted c. 2001 by Archive Britain Campaign, Real Imaging Solutions Ltd.  A reprint with preface by Matt Wingett was also published in 2015 and is available from the Publisher: Life is Amazing

  • The book is credited with three different ‘subtitles’: 1. … with the Towns of Portsea and Gosport, Porchester Castle and the Isle of Wight (1817, Bibliotheca Hantoniensis); 2… to which is added an appendix of many of the charters granted to the town (1817, British Library Catalogue);3…. containing a full and enlarged account of its ancient and present state (c. 2001, British Library Catalogue).

Critical Comments

Allen’s History was largely based on other accounts and drew criticisms of plagiarism.

Other Comments

A ‘very valuable’ manuscript by Lake [misspelt Luke] Allen in the British Museum was mentioned by Sumner Wilson in his Supplementary Hampshire Bibliography, Proc Hants Field Club Soc, vol. III, Pt I, 304 (Turley, 232).

Tracings of several maps of Portsmouth made by Lake Allen are held by the British Library (Add. MS 8155).

The early works mentioned above are:

J. Watts, The Ancient and Modern History of Portesmouth [sic], Portsea, Gosport and their Environs, Gosport, 1799.

[James Charles Mottley], The History of Portsmouth. with an Account of the Towns of Portsea, Gosport…and the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, 1801.

Webb (1981) attributed the above work to J. C. Mottley and suggested that Robert Heysham Cumyns not J. Watts was the author of the other title (though in 1791 he was a curate in parish in the Cotswolds and did not serve in Portsea until 1820, according to the Church of England Clergy Database).

Contributor

Barry Shurlock, 14 October 2025

Key Words

Portsmouth, Frederic Madden, Mottley, Watts, Cumyns

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