Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Hooppell, Robert Eli
HOOPPELL, ROBERT ELI (1833–1895), antiquary, born in the parish of St. Mary, Rotherhithe, Surrey, on 30 Jan. 1833, was the son of John Eli and Mary Ann Hooppell. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's free grammar school, St. Olave's, Southwark, and was admitted sizar at St. John's College, Cambridge, on 30 June 1851. He was also a scholar of the college. In 1855 he graduated B.A., being fortieth wrangler in the mathematical tripos, and in 1856 he obtained a first-class in moral science. He proceeded M.A. in 1858, LL.D. in 1865, and was admitted ad eundem at Durham.
From 1855 to 1861 Hooppell was second and mathematical master at Beaumaris grammar school. He was ordained deacon in 1857, and priest in 1859, and from 1859 to 1861 he served as English chaplain at Menai Bridge. On the foundation at South Shields in 1861 of Dr. Winterbottom's nautical college he was appointed the first head master, and he remained in that position until 1875, when he was instituted to the rectory of Byers Green, co. Durham. For the last year or two of his life he was in delicate health, and wintered at Bournemouth. He died at the Burlington, Oxford Road, in that town on 23 Aug. 1895, and was buried in Bournemouth cemetery. He married at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, on 20 June 1855, Margaret, daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Hooppell of Fishleigh, Devonshire; she survived him with two sons and one daughter. Hooppell served on the committee which superintended the excavation of the Roman camp at South Shields. His paper on the discoveries there (Natural History Transactions of Northumberland, vii. 126-42) was the prelude to a lecture, published in 1879, on ' Vinovium, the buried Roman City at Binchester,' between Bishop Auckland and Byers Green, and in 1891 'Vinovia, a buried Roman City,' with thirty-eight illustrations. The substance of this treatise appeared in the journal of the British Archæological Association, and he contributed to the same journal for 1895 a paper on 'Roman Manchester and the Roads to and from it.' From 1877 he read papers on the names of Roman stations before the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries, and he contributed to the 'Archæologia Æliana' and the 'Illustrated Archæologist.' His address, as president of the Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club, is in the 'Natural History Transactions of Northumberland,' vii. 187-206, and after his death there was published in 1898 a volume entitled 'Rambles of an Antiquary,' being a series of papers sent by him to the 'Newcastle Courant' in 1880 and 1881, chiefly on the antiquities of Northumberland and Durham.
Hooppell also published, in addition to several single sermons, 'Reason and Religion, or the leading Doctrines of Christianity,' 1867; 2nd ed. 1895; and 'Materialism, has it any real Foundation in Science?' 2nd ed. 1874.
[Journal Archæol. Assoc. 1895, p. 280; Proc. of Soc. of Antiquaries, Newcastle- upon-Tyne, vii. 134, 141, 145, 156 (with engraved portrait); Newcastle Courant, 31 Aug. 1895, pp. 3, 4; information from R. F. Scoit, esq., bursar, St. John's Coll., Camb., and from Mrs. Hooppell.]