Benjamin Webb

Benjamin Webb (28 November 1819 – 27 November 1885) was an English clergyman and co-founder of the Cambridge Camden Society; he was known as a leading authority on questions of ecclesiastical art. Life Webb was born in London at Addle Hill, Doctor's Commons, on 28 November 1819, eldest son of Benjamin Webb, of the firm of Webb & Sons, wheelwrights. In 1828 he was admitted to St Paul's School under Dr John Sleath, and proceeded with an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1838. He graduated B.A. in 1842, M.A. in 1845. While still an undergraduate he, together with his somewhat older friend, John Mason Neale, founded the Cambridge Camden Society, which played an important part in the ecclesiological revival consequent upon the Tractarian movement, and of which Webb continued to be secretary, both at Cambridge and afterwards in London (where it continued from 1848 under the name of the Ecclesiological Society), from its beginning to its extinction in 1863. With Webb and Neale were associated in this enterprise Webb's lifelong friend Alexander Beresford Hope and Frederick Apthorp Paley. The society restored the Round Church at Cambridge, and Webb had the honour of showing the restored edifice to the poet Wordsworth. Webb was early recognised as a leading authority on questions of ecclesiastical art. He was ordained deacon in 1842 and priest in 1843, and served as curate first under his college tutor, Thomas Thorp (who had been the first president of the Cambridge Camden Society), at Kemerton in Gloucestershire, and afterwards at Brasted in Kent, under William Hodge Mill, who, as Regius Professor of Hebrew, had countenanced and encouraged his ecclesiological work at Cambridge, and whose daughter he married in 1847. He was also for a while curate to William Dodsworth at Christ Church, St Pancras, London.