Turnor was the son of Edmund Turnor and his wife Mary, daughter of John Disney of Lincoln, and was a descendant of Sir Edmund Turnor the brother of 17th-century judge Christopher Turnor. Turnor's father held estates at Stoke Rochford and Panton in Lincolnshire; following the death of his father, these estates passed to Turnor. He was married twice, first to Elizabeth, the daughter of Philip Broke of Broke Hall in Suffolk, and sister to Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke. The marriage produced a daughter, Elizabeth Edmunda. His second marriage was to Dorothea, daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Tucker and sister of Sir Edward Tucker KCB, producing five sons, and two daughters. Of his and Dorothea's offspring, Christopher became a promoter and architect of Lincolnshire vernacular buildings, MP, and husband of Lady Caroline Finch-Hatton; Algernon became an Anglicancleric and married Sophia, daughter of Sir Thomas Whichcote, 6th Baronet; and Henry Marten became a captain in the King's Dragoon Guards and married Marianne Macdonald, daughter of 3rd Baron Macdonald, and a descendant of Lady Anne, sister of King Edward IV. Turnor was the maternal uncle to Sir William Foulis and Sir Thomas Whichcote. Edmund Turnor died on 19 March 1829 and was buried in the family vault, installed in 1801 at St Andrew and St Mary's Church, Stoke Rochford.
Career
Turnor graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a BA and an MA, after which he undertook a tour of France, Switzerland and Italy. In 1778 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1786, a fellow of the Royal Society. Before gaining fellowships Turnor commissioned drawings of antiquities found during his tour of Normandy, including that of a now non-existent fountain in the Place de la Pucelle, Rouen, these presented and read to the Society of Antiquaries, including a description of the fortress at Rouen, built by Henry V. He later became a fellow of the Royal Academy of Rouen. Turnor became a Justice of the Peace and in 1810–11 High Sheriff for Lincolnshire, and between 1802 and 1806, MP for the borough of Midhurst. Among Turnor's friends and collaborators were the biographer Andrew Kippis, the antiquarians Daniel Lysons, Samuel Lysons and Richard Gough, the writer Bennet Langton, and the naturalistJoseph Banks who was a close friend. It was for Andrew Kippis that he provided in 1793 a memoir of Sir Richard Fanshawe for Biographia Britannica, largely based on his reading of Fanshawe's wife Lady Fanshawe’s manuscript memoirs of her husband. Lady Fanshawe, the daughter of Sir John Harrison, was the sister of Margaret, the wife of Turnor’s ancestor Sir Edmund Turnor. The Turnor’s gained possession of the Stoke Rochford Hall and estates from the Harrison family though this marriage. In 1824 Turnor founded a National School in Colsterworth run under the principles of Scottish educationalist Dr Bell, which also served nearby villages and parishes of Stoke Rochford, Skillington, and Woolsthorpe. The school included a school room and an adjoining house and garden for the schoolmaster. A Roman bath was discovered by Turnor on the banks of the River Witham near Stoke Rochford.
Works
Turnor's historical and antiquarian works and presentations include:
Chronological Tables of the High Sheriffs of the County of Lincoln and of the Knights of the Shire, Citizens, and Burgesses, within the same, Joseph White, London
Contributed to "Lincolnshire" in Gough's Magna Britannia
Contributed to Philosophical Transactions "A Narrative of the Earthquake felt in Lincolnshire on 25 Feb. 1792," Philosophical Transactions lxxxii. 283–8
"Sir Richard Fanshawe" memoir for Biographia Britannica
London's Gratitude; or an Account of such pieces of Sculpture and Painting as have been placed in Guildhall at the expense of the City of London. To which is added a list of persons to whom the Freedom of the City has been presented since 1758, London. Reprint: Gale ECCO.
Description of an Ancient Castle at Rouen in Normandy, London ; also printed in Archæologia, Society of Antiquaries of London, vii. 232–5. Reprint: Gale ECCO.
Edited Clarendon'sCharacters of Eminent Men in the Reigns of Charles I and II, London. Reprint: BiblioBazaar.
Presented A Description of the Diet of King Charles when Duke of York, London to the Society of Antiquaries of London
Collections for the History of the Town and Soke of Grantham, containing Authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, from Lord Portsmouth's Manuscripts, William Miller, London
Remarks on the Military History of Bristol, containing the Royal Commission appointing Sir Edmund Turnor... treasurer and paymaster of the garrisons...... With a Plan of the outworks of Bristol, Bristol ; also printed in the Archæologia, Society of Antiquaries of London, xiv. 119–31. Reprint: British Library, Historical Print Editions.
A short view of the proceedings of the several committees and meetings held in consequence of the intended petition to Parliament, from the county of Lincoln, for a limited exportation of wool, in the years 1781 and 1782,
"Account of a Roman Bath near Stoke in Lincolnshire", Archæologia vol XXII, Society of Antiquaries of London
