Beaupré Bell was born in 1704 into an ancient family whose seat was at Beaupré Hall in Norfolk. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1725 and MA in 1729. Beaupré Bell inherited the ancient manor of Outwell and Upwell from his father of the same name, whose eccentric behaviour and neglect of his estates had allowed the manor house to fall into disrepair. Beaupré Bell senior is reported to have been ‘one of the strangest of mortals, letting his wild colts and cattle of twenty or thirty years old come into the very house, which was quite uncovered and every other way suitable, in a very ruinous condition’. The younger Beaupré Bell remained unmarried and without issue; at his death the manor passed to his sister Elizabeth, who married William Greaves of Fulbourn. Despite his father's neglect of his estates, Beaupré Bell inherited sufficient lands to indulge fully his diverse antiquarian interests. His particular obsession was medals and coins; he devoted much energy to a study of the coins of the Roman emperors, which remained unpublished at his death in 1741. A proposal for a publication by subscription of his work on Roman coins, with the title Tabulae Augustae, was issued by Cambridge University Press in 1734; a copy of this proposal, accompanied by collections and notes towards this work, is now bound with other materials as Trinity College MS R.10.10.