The Reverend John Hellins
1749-1827
The grave of John Hellins and his wife Ann is distinguished by a tall stone cross which is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. The plinth is simply inscribed on one side, ‘Here Rest JH + AH + AM’, and on the opposite side, ‘Looking unto JESUS’.
The Reverend John Hellins became vicar of Potterspury in 1790, having been curate at Greens Norton for the previous seven years. Born at Ashreigny in Devon in about 1749, the son of a poor labourer, he was apprenticed by the parish to a cooper in Chulmleigh and remained in this trade until he was about 20 years old.
John Hellins somehow taught himself elementary mathematics and became a teacher in a small school at Bishop’s Tawton, near Barnstaple. While there he made the acquaintance of the Reverend Malachy Hitchins, a meeting which was to change his life forever. With Hitchins’ influence, he was made assistant to Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory. He remained there until 1776 and during that time studied Latin and Greek and qualified for holy orders.
He became curate at Constantine in Cornwall in 1779. Besides studying the classics, he extended his knowledge of mathematics to such an extent that he submitted a paper entitled ‘Theorems for computing logarithms’ to the Royal Society. This was the first of nine of his papers to be published by the Society. Hellins continued to write and publish books on mathematics and astronomy for the rest of his life, and was rewarded for his work by being made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1796.
Two years later, he received the Royal Society’s greatest honour: the Copley Medal, following publication of his paper, ‘An improving solution of a problem in physical astronomy’, which provided a mathematical solution that helped in computing the perturbations in the motion of the Earth, Mars and Venus due to their mutual attraction'. This medal, which has been awarded annually since 1731, is the Royal Society’s oldest and most prestigious award. Other recipients include Faraday, Darwin, Pasteur, Franklin, Rutherford, Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Perhaps John Hellins’ greatest achievement locally was in starting a day school in Potterspury in 1817. His name is now probably the best known from Potterspury’s past, having been adopted in 1990 as the name for the village school. Few people can have had such a lasting impact on the life of the village.