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FAMOUS PEOPLE

REVEREND JOHN PRIOR (1729-1803)
JOHN PRIOR's 1779 map of Leicestershire was the first authoritative survey of the whole county to have been carried out since Elizabethan times. The map used a scale of one inch to the mile and the survey work was carried out between 1775 and 1777 by PRIOR and his former pupil, JOHN WHYMAN. The map was extremely detailed, showing not only natural features but also things such as houses, farms and windmills.

PRIOR was born in SWITHLAND in 1729 and was sent to school in WOODHOUSE, where he became master aged only fifteen. He was an excellent mathematician and musician, as well as an accomplished classicist. From 1755 to 1763, he was curate of QUORN and WOODHOUSE, marrying ANN COX of QUORN in 1763, with whom he was to have a son and three daughters. Later that year, he was appointed Master of Ashby Grammar School and Curate of Willesley.

Under the Patronage of the HASTINGS family, he was able to study for his Bachelor of Divinity degree at Emmanuel College Cambridge but, due to his commitments at the school, could only attend classes during the school holidays.

His wife died in 1774 and in 1783 he became Vicar of Ashby, living in the Vicarage which he had rebuilt himself. He taught himself Hebrew at the age of sixty and, although afflicted by a stoke in his later years, he was still teaching just eight days before his death in October 1803. He was seventy-four.

His friend, the antiquarian NICOLS said of REVEREND PRIOR:
"His mild and unassuming temper, his perfect freedom fro ambition, his love of music and his relish for the calm delights of literature, friendship and domestic society, preserved him from those painful sensations which arise from disappointed expectations and rendered his life a scene of almost uninterrupted enjoyment... Humility was the highest characteristic feature of his mind; and with abilities of the highest order, both natural and acquired, he was perhaps of all men, the least obtrusive".