Researching Henry Andrews

For 43 years he worked in his spare time as 'Compiler of the tables detailing the movement of the planets' for Old Moore's Almanac. His day job was Calculator to the Board of Longitude. He had also set up a boarding school which taught trigonometry and navigation as extra subjects, as well as running a shop which sold books, stationery, barometers, thermometers, and philosophical and mathematical instruments. He was a well-respected professional and valued advisor to the Rev'd Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal.

Andrews predicted the annular solar eclipse in 1791:

:To the north of Scotland it will be a very great eclipse; but nowhere total on account of the apparent diameter of the sun. The spectators will be entertained with a beautiful annulus, or ring of light encompassing the opaque body of the Moon on every side. This eclipse begins with the rising sun in the back settlements of Carolina and Virginia, from whence it traverses Hudson's Bay, north-easterly towards the coast of Greenland, Iceland and Lapland, and the northern coast of Great Tartary where this phenomenon will end and quit the earth with the setting sun.

He lived in Knightsbridge, and was married to Anne Kennedy, the daughter of John Kennedy of Hammersmith, a nurseryman who assisted Andrews in the descriptions of the plants he illustrated.

He was an accomplished and unusual botanical artist, in that he was not only the artist but also the engraver, colourist, and publisher of his books in an era when most artists were only employed to draw plates. The Botanist's Repository was his first publication; issued serially in London in ten volumes between 1797 and 1812, the Repository at a half-crown an issue, provided affordable images of plants to the growing population of amateur gardeners in Britain. This was the first serious rival to the Kew publication, Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Perhaps not surprisingly, W. Botting Hemsley, a botanist who was employed by Kew, was critical of the quality of Andrews' 664 coloured plates in the Botanist's Repository:

"The drawing is usually fairly good, though not equal to some of this artist's later work... There is no pretense of giving any analysis of the flowers, but they themselves are often inexact and generally inadequate to be of any use botantically. The descriptive part is also unequal, and synonymy altogether excluded. Nevertheless, the Repository was in one sense superior to the Botanical Magazine of that date, because the majority of the plants figured were of recent introduction."

Andrews' major work is considered to be his Coloured Engravings of Heaths, published in four volumes between 1794 and 1830. It focused on the many species of the genus Erica that were introduced to Great Britain from South Africa in the early and middle 19th century, leading to what has been called an "Erica mania" in British horticulture.

Henry Andrews reportedly named the Australian flowering plant Correa after the Portuguese botanist and polymath, José Francisco Correia da Serra, who was living in exile in England from 1795 to 1797, and who pursued research with their mutual colleague Joseph Banks.

According to a contemporary announcement, Andrews also taught drawing from nature and etching to private students.

Andrews was born at Eling in Hampshire in 1821. His parents Joshua and Elizabeth Andrews moved to Blackheath, then a village in north-west Kent, and he was educated at Blackheath Propriety School. He was one of the founders of Blackheath Paragon Cricket Club which played on the heath.

As a cricketer he was known as a hard hitter of a cricket ball, favouring playing to the leg side. He made his first-class cricket debut for the Gentlemen of Kent during the 1849 Canterbury Week as a wicket-keeper. In total he played in 41 first-class matches, playing intermittently for Kent between 1854 and 1863 as well as making appearances for amateur sides. He took 31 catches and made eight stumpings in first-class matches. Unusually Andrews played wearing spectacles, including whilst he was keeping wicket, is reported to have developed an innovative outfit for keeping wicket in consisting of a waistcoat attached to trousers, allowing him to "dispense with belt as well as braces". The Times reported in 1936 that "he was so chaffed ... that he never wore it again in public".

Andrews lived at Blackheath Park in Kent and was a member of the London Stock Exchange. He married Harriet Terrey, the couple having 11 sons one of whom, Walter, played first-class cricket for Sussex between 1888 and 1892.

Andrews died at Dulwich Common in Surrey in 1865 aged 44.