Thomas_Alcock_Beck
Thomas Alcock Beck (1795–1846) was an English author known for writing Annales Furnesienses (1844), a history of Furness Abbey, which was dedicated by permission to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and which contained twenty-six steel engravings and several woodcuts.[2] Beck was a long-term resident of Hawkshead in Lancashire, where his parents had lived at The Grove. He used a wheelchair for much of his life, being unable to walk due to a spinal complaint. At one time he had attended Hawkshead Grammar School and he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814, but left without taking a degree.
Around 1819, he commenced the building of his regency mansion Esthwaite Lodge (subsequently a youth hostel), to the design of George Webster. The grounds were specially laid out with easy gradients for his wheelchair.[3] Besides other antiquarian interests, he also edited Dr. William Close's unfinished work An Itinerary of Furness.
