Biography

The Wyon family was descended from Georg Wyon, a silver-chaser working in Cologne in the early eighteenth-century. His third son, Peter George Wyon, silver-chaser, medallist and engraver, came to England during the reign of George II. From his son George Wyon sprang at least four lines of medallists and engravers. One line included William Wyon (1795-1851) and his son Leonard Charles Wyon (1826-1891), engravers at the Royal Mint for a large part of the nineteenth-century. With the exception of a single account book of L.C. Wyon, the Wyon Papers in this collection are of another branch of the family, who were successively Chief Engravers of Seals through the nineteenth-century. The first of these was Thomas Wyon (1767-1830). He was succeeded by his son Benjamin Wyon (1802-1858). Another son, Thomas Wyon (1792-1817), was briefly Chief Engraver at the Royal Mint, but died young. Benjamin Wyon was succeeded by his sons Joseph Shepherd Wyon (1836-1873), Alfred Benjamin Wyon (1837-1884) and Allan Wyon (1843-1907). Allan's son Allan Gairdner Wyon (1882-1962) succeeded him and was reappointed by George V in 1910. The family also practised privately as medallists and engravers. Allan Gairdner Wyon was a sculptor, specialising latterly in ecclesiastical work. In 1933 he was ordained priest, and for several years he was Vicar of St. Paul's Newlyn, Cornwall, where he continued to design ecclesiastical sculpture. As a clergyman he followed his uncle, Walter James Wyon (1839-1929), who was for many years a Cowley Father under R.M. Benson, and latterly Rector of Ufford, Suffolk.

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