Thomas John Hussey
By Jean Wilson
Hayes inhabitants were amazed in 1831 at almost the first action of their new rector, the ‘eccentric’ Thomas John Hussey. Newly married, he moved into the rectory (today’s Hayes Library) and immediately began to build an Observatory as an extension to the house. No planning requirements needed then!
He employed a local carpenter, Gabriel Hutfield, who had a workshop in George Lane, to carry out the project. It involved creating a passageway, lined in dark wood, from the rear of the building to a circular room with a 13-foot (3.96m) wooden dome covered with copper. Instead of one continuous open slit, his dome had three doors in different sections which he reported ‘opened up to provide an excellent view of the night sky.’
Hussey was 34 years old and from an early age had been interested in astronomy. Ordained in 1823 he moved into Chislehurst Rectory where Francis Dawson had a telescope used by his predecessor Francis Wollaston, who had also been a keen astronomer. Hussey was able to use the Chislehurst telescope to report on sun spots and was selected to provide the English part of a new star chart drawn up by the Berlin Academy of Science. He spent a great deal of his money on astronomical equipment including purchasing a magnificent Fraunhofer telescope, one of only four in the country.
Hussey had to wait until 1832 before he could issue invitations to other astronomers to see his new observatory at Hayes in action. ‘The telescope 6.5 inches aperture that I got from Munich is at length mounted and, although about nine feet long, has not, when following the stars with its highest point, the slightest shake and tremor and the machinery keeps going for about half an hour without winding up.’
In the early 1830s, he also verified astronomical tables for John Lubbock, drew up a Catalogue of Comets from 1770 BC to 1744 AD, investigated differences between the views of ancient and more modern astronomers on the Rotation of Jupiter and continued to provide observations which appeared in various journals both in Britain and in Germany.
Discovery of the Planet Neptune
On 17 November 1834, he wrote to the Astronomer Royal, G B Airy, to suggest the possibility of some disturbing body beyond Uranus. He proposed to sweep closely for the body or bodies but Airy replied that ‘if there were any extraneous action, I doubt much the possibility of determining the place of the planet which produced it’.
Discouraged by this reply Hussey did not proceed but within a few years, the new planet had been discovered and was called Neptune. In the 1980s Patrick Moore saw the importance of Hussey’s observations and subsequently Hussey was credited with the Guinness Book of Astronomy as the person to be the first to suggest in the 1830s the existence of the planet.
Halley’s Comet
Hussey’s last astronomical sightings were In 1835. Astronomers in England were all competing to be the first to sight Halley’s Comet. Hussey wrote very excitedly to JohnLubbock and W S Stratford that he had not been able to see it on Thursday but found it on Sunday morning at about 3.30 a.m. His findings were reported in the Times on 25 August 1835.
An accident then happened which prevented him from using his observatory which later became a schoolroom for his children. His exceptional collection of instruments was sold to Durham University in 1838 where they were used for a purpose-built observatory. The rectory was sold to Bromley Council in 1937 and shortly before the start of the Second World War Hussey’s observatory was one of the structures demolished to prepare for the new public library. Nothing remains in Hayes to mark Revd Thomas Hussey’s contribution to astronomy and science.