Flaxman Charles John Spurrell

Born at Mile End in Stepney, London, Spurrell was the eldest son of Dr. Flaxman and Ann Spurrell and a descendant of the Spurrell family of Norfolk. He was a nephew of the Rev. Frederick Spurrell, a fellow archaeologist, and an uncle of the biologist and author Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell. Not long after his birth, the family settled at Bexley in Kent, living for many years at The Priory, Picardy Road, Belvedere (later home to the Priory Conservative Club). Spurrell was educated at Epsom College and went on to study medicine, although he never completed his studies.

By the late 1850s Spurrell had developed an interest in archaeology and geology in the North Kent area and was encouraged to pursue his interest by his father, who had been a founding member of both the Kent Archaeological Society and the West Kent Natural History, Microscopical and Photographic Society. He began to examine flint implements in and around Crayford and was, according to Nesta Caiger, “the first archaeologist to study fully the many deneholes which were dug in Kent and Essex”, many of which he descended into, examined and photographed. He visited and investigated dozens of other sites, including prehistoric and Roman sites on both sides of the Thames estuary. Spurrell discovered an Acheulean “chipping floor” at Stoneham's Pit in Crayford and the Middle Palaeolithic site later known as Baker's Hole in the Ebbsfleet Valley. He was the first to publish on the archaeological technique of refitting lithic artefacts, which he called “restoration”. Along with documenting fine-scale artifact distributions, he used refitting to validate the integrity of archaeological context, a technique that gained great popularity 100 years later in the 1980s. In his 1884 article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Spurrell used refitting and replication experiments to establish the various differences in “style and method of chipping” with the goal of establishing the evolution of cognition in ancient humans. He also recognized the differences between formal tool production and expedient tool use. These approaches are standard analytical procedures and concepts in Stone Age archaeological studies in the 21st century. He published his findings in the periodicals of the Kent Archaeological Society, the Essex Archaeological Society and the Royal Archaeological Society, as well as those of other societies and groups. In the 1870s Spurrell met Flinders Petrie, becoming a trusted friend and collaborator. Over the following decades his attention turned increasingly to egyptology. While Petrie was unable to convince Spurrell to travel to Egypt with him, the objects that Petrie sent back to England were careful studied and catalogued by Spurrell, including important items discovered at Naqada and Tell el-Amarna. In 1885 and 1889 Spurrell published his theory about the origins of the river Thames' vernacular embankments, described as a "startling suggestion" since shown to be probably correct. In 1895 he presented a number of prehistoric artefacts to the Natural History Museum in London and later donated material from his personal collection to the museum at Norwich Castle. Some of his photographic images are now held by the Historic England Archive.

Shortly after his mother's death in 1896, Spurrell retired to Norfolk, where he resided first with his uncle Daniel Spurrell at the Manor House in Bessingham and later at The Den, another house on the estate. Despite what Petrie called “the entreaties of his friends”, he seldom left Norfolk and his self-imposed retirement. On 27 March 1912 he married his cousin Katherine Anne Spurrell (1852–1919), a daughter of Daniel Spurrell and a noted daffodil breeder whose cultivars had won the Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. Spurrell was a Fellow of the Geological Society from 1868 to 1905 and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries from 1899 to about 1910. Spurrell died on 25 February 1915 in Bessingham and is buried there in St Mary's Churchyard. When a housing estate was built at Joyden's Wood in Bexley in the 1950s, one of the roads was named Spurrell Avenue in his honour.

Flaxman Charles John Spurrell is recorded with the occupation anthropologist. Recorded as anthropologist, photographer, archaeologist, geologist and egyptologist.