In 1809 he became vicar of Tortington, Sussex, but resigned the living soon afterwards on his institution as rector of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire (the Duke of Norfolk being patron of both benefices).
[1] Duncumb was secretary to the Herefordshire Agricultural Society from its formation in 1797, and in 1801 he published an Essay on the Best Means of Applying Pasture Lands, etc., to the Production to Grain, and of reconverting them to Grass.
per week for collecting materials, with extra payment for journeys out of the county, the work to become the property of the Duke.
The Duke had bought several collections of antiquarian material relating to the history of the county, and Duncumb drew on these, and on his own researches in the British Museum, Bodleian Library, Tower of London and elsewhere.
[1][11] The first volume of the Collections towards the History and Antiquities of the County of Hereford, containing a general history of the county and an account of the city, was published as a quarto in Hereford in 1804; and the first part of a second volume, containing the hundreds of Broxash and Ewyas Lacy, with a few pages of Greytree hundred, appeared in 1812.
Following the Duke of Norfolk's death, the unsold portions of the Collections, along with the pages for Greytree hundred (pp.
They were taken from Hereford to a warehouse in London, where the parcels lay undisturbed and forgotten until 1837, when the whole stock was acquired by a bookseller, Thomas Thorpe.
[12][13] George Strong's Heraldry of Herefordshire (London, 1848), arranged by families, with brief accounts of their seats, claims on its title page to be "Adapted to form a Supplement to 'Duncumb's County History'".
The project proved impossible to continue, and the residual funds were passed to the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club (Herefordshire's natural historical, archaeological and historical society), which established the Duncumb Fund to assist the publication of research.