John Wilkinson FSA, scholar-priest, died in January.
 
Ian Stewart, Lord Stewartby FSA, government minister and medieval coin specialist, died in March.
 
Peter Davey FSA, architectural historian and editor, died in March
 
Valerie Cromwell, Lady Kingman FSA, parliamentary historian, died in March.
 
Philip Priestley FSA, inventor and antique watch specialist, died in March.
 
Appreciations appear in Fellows Remembered below. The section also contains further notices on the late Jane Laughton FSA and the late Ray Sutcliffe FSA.
 
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Ten new Fellows were elected on 15 March:
 
Graham Barker (coinage of the Emperor Carausis, founder member of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars)
 
Jonathan Benjamin (early prehistory, and coastal and underwater archaeology)
 
Peter Berridge (Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeology of the West Country, Wales and Essex)
 
Robert Densem (archaeology of London)
 
Mary E Harlow (the ancient life course, dress, textile production and dyestuffs)
 
James Hodsdon (history of Gloucestershire and surrounding area)
 
Visa Aleksis Immonen (medieval material culture in the Nordic countries, especially Finland)
 
Katie Meheux (librarian, researching Vere Gordon Childe)
 
Timothy Purbrick (British Army officer responsible for delivering a Military Cultural Property Protection capability)
 
Ian Shaw (ancient Egyptian landscape, ethnicity, technology, innovation, material culture and urbanisation)
 
For details see Ballot Results. Further details can be seen in the Ballot Archive (Fellows only).
 
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Women & Power: A Manifesto, by Mary Beard FSA, was listed as the UK’s best-selling hardback in the Sunday Times (18 March), having sold 4,115 copies in the previous week (bringing the total sold to 106,530). Her other new book, Civilisations: How Do we Look/The Eye of Faith, linked to the BBC’s TV Civilisations series, came in on the same list at number seven. ‘I’m surprised, in a way,’ wrote Michael Bird in the Telegraph (18 March) of the second book, ‘that Beard agreed to put her name to this slight, rather mixed-up spin-off, in which the breadth of her understanding and the depth of her feeling for classical civilisation get short-changed by the have-it-all eclecticism of the Civilisations series concept.’ People seem to like it, though.
 
In late January the Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s archives were upended by thieves who took ancient artefacts and modern tools. On 16 March Kent Police reported that they had recovered much of the loot: ‘Responding to information received, and working with the Rural Task Force, officers from the Canterbury Community Policing Team attended a property in Military Road, Canterbury on Thursday 15 March and recovered the items, which includes most of the 2,000 archaeological finds stolen from the Kingsmead store.’ No arrests have been made, and the police are asking the public for help.
 
Blick Mead: Exploring the 'First Place' in the Stonehenge Landscape, by David Jacques FSA, Tom Phillips and Tom Lyons, describes excavations at Blick Mead, Wiltshire, between 2005 and 2016. The book, says the blurb, ‘charts the story of the Blick Mead excavations, from the project’s local community-based origins to a multi-university research project using the latest cutting-edge technology to address important new questions about the origins of the Stonehenge landscape.’ With contributions from many specialists, the monograph reports evidence for human activity beside the river Avon. Seventeen radiocarbon dates ‘present the longest Mesolithic sequence of dates of any Mesolithic site in Britain’. They range between around 7800 BC and 4800 BC, but stratigraphy could not separate different eras. Large amounts of flint artefacts, burnt flint and fragmentary bone (of which aurochs constitute 57% of the identifiable large animal assemblage) occur in a layer of wet alluvium, formed from floodwater sediment and valley side colluvium. A significant layer of late neolithic/bronze age peat was identified in boreholes south of the excavations.
 
Francis Pryor FSA blogs about ‘Archaeology, rural life and the lessons of history’ as Francis Pryor – In the Long Run. Never short of a word or two – 14 books listed down the side include his latest novel, The Way, the Truth and the Dead (2017) and Paths to the Past: Encounters with Britain's Hidden Landscapes (2018) – his blogs typically feature personal musings on his work and life, but few have been more intimate than his latest of 15 March. ‘My own prostate problems began in my mid-sixties’, he writes, launching into a world of biopsies, scans and bodily functions (the title of his ‘eventual autobiography,’ he decides, will be Six Prostate Biopsies and Still Cycling to Work). ‘Signs of prostate problems MUST be taken seriously,’ he concludes: ‘PLEASE don’t cover them up, or pretend they’re not there.’

Historic England’s March Heritage Online Debate is on the subject of Heritage Crime, with a focus on metal theft. Texts include ‘Government has reviewed the Scrap Metal Dealers Act. Now what?’, and ‘The development of the Heritage Crime Programme in England,’ both by Mark Harrison FSA, and ‘Protecting heritage at sea’, by Mark Dunkley FSA.
 
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to London on 7 March on a three-day official visit, showcasing Saudi art, music and film in the face of protests about Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen and unease about the Kingdom’s attempts to curtail free speech. Anna Somers Cocks FSA took an original line in the Art Newspaper (8 March), describing her tour of Mada’in Saleh, the southernmost settlement of first century AD Nabateans. The site, she writes, ‘has hardly been excavated yet, but 111 tombs rise out of the desert, carved into the yellow sandstone… Saudi Arabia does not have a tourist industry – one of the many things that MBS has said he wants to change – so you have to have special permission to get into the country and even more special permission to travel around it, particularly if you are a woman. In 2013, I was the guest of Mohammed Hafiz and Hamza Serafi of Athr Gallery in Jiddah who have plenty of wasta (influence) … everything suddenly became possible, and with two chaperones I found myself being driven fast out of the holy city of Medina. Mile after mile of desert went by. Then, suddenly, there were the tombs with their classical pediments and the eagles of Rome. It was a shock and unexpectedly moving to see our world, preserved in stone so deep into Arabia and the heartland of Islam.’ Photo Somers Cocks.
 
Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology in Southeastern Australia, by David Frankel FSA, explores the Indigenous archaeology of Victoria. He considers what the archaeology of many sites south and east of the Murray River reveals about Indigenous society, migration, and hunting techniques. An understanding of the changing environment and 19th-century ethnohistory, says Frankel, can inform our interpretation of the archaeological record, and he proposes approaches for future archaeological research. The book, says Peter Hiscock FSA in the blurb, is ‘A carefully crafted and impressively illustrated depiction of the economic and social lives of past Aboriginal peoples … it provides a foundation for thinking about the remarkable variety of ways Aboriginal foragers adapted to the lands of southeastern Australia.’

The Dawn of European Civilization, by Gordon Childe FSA, went through six editions between 1925 and 1957, and was widely regarded as a key, innovative archaeological text of international stature. Yet the book was rejected by Oxford University Press. ‘It was never a best-seller and never reviewed in the British press. It was translated only into French in 1949 and Russian in 1951.’ Thus writes Katie Meheux, in ‘”A work from an unknown member of the proletariat”: Digitising and re-examining Vere Gordon Childe’s Dawn of European Civilization,’ in Archaeology International 20 (2017). To celebrate the 80th anniversary of UCL Institute of Archaeology, UCL Library Services and the Institute digitised all six published editions, and Childe’s personal annotated copies of the third, fourth and fifth editions, recently discovered in UCL Library Stores. The goal was to make these available with full-text open access, though the links don't yet seem to offer that. Meanwhile Meheux’s fascinating article can be read. ‘The Dawn’, she writes, ‘represents an important record of the changing ideas and knowledge of 20th century European archaeology and an ancestral text for both European prehistory and archaeological theory. But it is also still a "living" text. It has never been out of print and is still widely used for archaeological research.’
 

John Wilkinson FSA died on 13 January aged 88. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in January 1980. Described by the Church Times as ‘a leading English scholar-priest of his generation’, he was Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem between 1979 and 1984. Obituaries have been published by the Church Times (Stephen Need, 16 February), the Council for British Research in the Levant (Denys Pringle FSA, February) and the Telegraph (7 March), from which three the below is selected.
 
The Revd Dr John Wilkinson was born in Wimbledon, attended the Dragon School, Oxford and Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, before National Service in Malaya (1948–50). He read Classics and Theology at Merton College, Oxford, trained for ordination at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, was curate at St Dunstan and All Saints Church, Stepney, and in 1959 received an LTh degree from the University of Louvain, Belgium.
 
He taught at Ely Theological College, and went to Jerusalem in 1961 as a tutor at St George’s College, where he carved the college’s foundation stone. In 1963 (the year he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Sacred Theology from the General Theological Seminary in New York) he returned to London as General Editor for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
 
He returned to St George’s College in 1969 as Dean of Studies, becoming a Canon of St George’s Cathedral (1973–75). Back in England again, he became Priest-in-Charge of Holy Trinity and All Saints, South Kensington, and the Bishop of London’s Director of Clergy Training. He was a Member of Council at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (now part of the Council for British Research in the Levant) between 1976 and 1979, before taking up the post of Director. ‘These were challenging years for the school,’ writes Need, ‘and John wasn’t an archaeologist. He supported several significant archaeological projects, however, and significantly improved the library.’
 
Wilkinson found himself the head of an institution, writes Pringle, ‘whose principal current research project (apart from the mountains of unpublished archaeological material from previous excavations still requiring attention) was an architectural survey of Islamic buildings, managed and executed largely by architectural historians … John’s principal contribution to the School as Director was to focus the attention of staff on research and the publication of its results … He was instrumental, along with Professor Jaroslav Folda and Dr Alan Borg, in assisting me, as Assistant-Director, in launching a complementary survey project on the church buildings of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem; and together with Professor Folda and myself he organized a conference on Crusader art at St George’s College in 1982.’
 
In that year he was awarded a PhD by the University of London and the Courtauld Institute of Art, published in 2002 as From Synagogue to Church: The traditional Design. Its Beginning, Its Definition, Its End. After a Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks Research Institute in Washington, in 2000 he founded the friends of Academic Research in Georgia. ‘John’s love and enthusiasm for Jerusalem’, says Pringle, ‘continued through his life and infected all who met him. Despite having no archaeological training as such, his work is an object lesson for excavators of what a rigorous analysis of the documentary evidence combined with acute observation of the surviving monuments can contribute to archaeological knowledge and understanding.’
 
Wilkinson's many publications also included The Supper and the Eucharist (1965), Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (1977) and The Jerusalem Jesus Knew (1983). Photo Revd Stanley Cann, Church Times.

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Ian Stewart, Lord Stewartby FSA died after a long illness on 3 March aged 82. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in March 1970.
 
The Right Honourable the Lord Stewartby served in Margaret Thatcher’s second and third governments, as Economic Secretary to the Treasury (1983–87) and as Minister of State for the Armed Forces (1987–88) and for Northern Ireland (1988–89). He was Member of Parliament for Hitchin (1974–83) and for North Hertfordshire (1983–92). He was created a Life Peer as Baron Stewartby of Portmoak in the District of Perth and Kinross in 1992, and sat in the House of Lords until retirement in 2015.
 
He was, however, according to his Times obituary (9 March), ‘a politician who had a life and interests outside politics, which was probably just as well because as a Minister … he rarely set pulses racing. He was not a natural at the dispatch box and at times it seemed as if he were deliberately trying to make his brief boring. One commentator said he had a knack of emptying the chamber.’ The obituary’s subhead reads, ‘Heroically uninspiring Treasury Minister of the Thatcher era who found his true calling as an expert collector of medieval coins.’
 
Collecting antique coins, says the Times, became a lifelong passion after he began when he was six. He attended Haileybury and won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, to read Classics. He graduated with a first, and was also an accomplished sportsman; he later played for the Lords/Commons cricket team. Working in the City he became a Director of Brown, Shipley and Co, a bank. Out of ministerial office, he returned to the City as Chairman of Throgmorton Trust and then Deputy Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank.
 
By 2007 he had amassed the finest private collection of Scottish coins, with many unique pieces, which he kept in the family home in Broughton, near Peebles. In June that year more than 1,000 of the coins were stolen. Nick Holmes FSA, Senior Curator of Numismatics at the National Museum of Scotland, said at the time, ‘This collection is a unique part of Scottish history and the impact of its loss cannot be overstated.’
 
‘The theft and the frustration of his ambition to catalogue his entire collection’, adds the Times, ‘affected him deeply, but he rallied to publish English Coins 1180–1551 in 2009.’ Despite the offer of a £50,000 reward the coins were not recovered, and the reward is still available. He gifted the rest of his Scottish collection, containing some 6,000 coins from the reign of Alexander III in 1280 until the Act of Union of 1707, to the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, in 2017. Spinks sold his collection of English coins in two events in 2016.
 
His other books included The Scottish Coinage (1955) and Coinage in Tenth-Century England, from Edward the Elder to Edgar's Reform (1989). He was Honorary Keeper of Medieval Coins at the Fitzwilliam Museum. He was awarded the Royal Numismatic Society’s Medal (1996) and the British Numismatic Society’s Sanford Saltus Gold Medal (1971).
 
He was also a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He was knighted in 1991 for political service. service. Photo at top shows Lord Stewartby with Lady Stewartby (the Herald).

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Peter Davey FSA died early in March aged 76. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in January 1991. Born in West Yorkshire, he was assistant technical editor of the Architects’ Journal a year before he qualified as an architect in 1969. He became Executive Editor of both the Architects’ Journal (AJ) and the Architectural Review (AR) in 1978, and both journals have published tributes (by Richard Waite and Catherine Slessor respectively), from which the following has been selected.
 
Davey was briefly in practice with RMJM before taking up architectural journalism full time. He was Editor of both AR (1980–2005) and AJ (1982–2005). He was ‘a dogged survivor of architectural fashion and corporate regime change,’ writes Slessor, ‘seeing off a succession of inept and indifferent publishers while keeping the AR on track, both critically and commercially.’ Commenting on the AJ website, Elizabeth Farrelly, a Sydney-based author and one-time Assistant Editor at the AJ, describes him as ‘one of the great romantic idealists. Passionate, stern, smart, kind and thoughtful he was an old-school socialist, a true seeker of authenticity and justice. A believer in particularity, he was deeply committed to Modernism’s fair and decent side while suspicious of those aspects that lent it to corporate capture. Even now I think of him, with his booming voice and cantilevered sideburns, as Dickens’ Mr Creakle.’
 
He was ‘a devout scholar of the Arts and Crafts,’ says Slessor ‘– he even looked a bit like William Morris – and his book on the movement ['Arts and Crafts Architecture: The Search for Earthly Paradise', 1980], published as an expanded and lavishly illustrated second edition by Phaidon in 1995, is still considered the key canonical survey.’
 
His many awards and honours included the Order of the White Rose of Finland, for services to architecture (1991), and an OBE (1998).
 

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Valerie Cromwell, Lady Kingman FSA died on 7 March aged 82. She was elected a Fellow of the Society in March 1998. Maurice Howard FSA, who was President of the Society 2010–14, has written this tribute:
 
‘It is with sadness that we hear of the death of our Fellow, Valerie Cromwell, Lady Kingman. Valerie was a scholar of 19th-century British history, with a particular interest in the institutions of government and how they came into being through elections and appointments to office. For many years she was Lecturer, then Reader of History at the University of Sussex. Her books during her academic years included The Great Reform Bill (1973), Aspects of Government in 19th Century Britain (1978) and a work in a key series of its day, the Longman ‘Problems and Perspectives in History’, Revolution or Evolution: British Government in the 19th Century (1978).
 
‘In 1991 she moved to the History of Parliament Trust as its General Editor, a post she fulfilled for ten years and for which she changed the job title to that of Director, reflecting the growing executive role of the post. She is remembered by that organisation as someone who championed the working conditions of staff and ensured that the coming of the personal computer to the office desk, a transformation often handled clumsily in those early years, was an efficient and democratic process. Her public service continued on several fronts following her retirement from the job in 2001. In 2004–05 she was High Sheriff of the County and City of Bristol, where she and husband John had made their home.
 
‘At the Society of Antiquaries, Valerie was a serving Council Member when she volunteered early in 2011 to convene a group to consider the issues surrounding the revision of the Society’s Statutes. Valerie’s expertise in constitutional matters made her an ideal person to lead this team, and she entered into it knowing that whilst a small committee could report in a fairly short time, consultation with lawyers and the full Membership of the Society would mean a process that would take several years.
 
‘With our Fellows Philip Lankester FSA and Leslie Webster FSA a wide-ranging report was submitted and discussed at Council in June 2012. The team understood exactly what was needed: a radical overhaul to make the Statutes clear, consistent and coherent, and with a command of wording to make procedures more flexible. By the end of that year it was clear the 1751 Charter could remain the primary governing document but that new provisions could be drawn up. Under the guidance of our Treasurer, Stephen Johnson FSA, and a facilitating grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, work was completed by the end of 2015 and approved by the Queen in Privy Council in February 2016.
 
‘The revised Statutes have allowed for better provision for Fellows to nominate members of Council, a smoother conduct of the Anniversary Meeting, the reduction of Council membership to a modern, workable number of Members, amongst many other things. It is one of the key initiatives that have made us a modern and forward-looking organisation yet one that values tradition and the core values of scholarship and its dissemination. The Society is deeply indebted to the team, led by Valerie, that focused the minds of Council on this process.
 
‘Valerie was a loyal supporter of all the Society’s events and in recent times when illness prevented her attendance, John would come on her behalf. Personally I will remember Valerie as a colleague of strong principles and clarity of judgment. I will remember standing with her for some hours in the rain outside the Palace of Westminster in 1981 to lobby MPs about disastrous cuts to university finances. I will cherish sharing our experiences of nights at the opera. To John and all the members of her family, the Society sends its sincerest condolences and can say that we will miss Valerie greatly.’
 
• Stephen Roberts FSA, current Director of the History of Parliament Trust, and Linda Clark, Editor of the Commons 1422­–­1504 project, have written a tribute to Valerie Cromwell on The History of Parliament blog (14 March, whence the photo is taken), which includes these extracts:

‘Valerie’s death’, say Roberts and Clark, ‘occurred in the week marking International Women’s Day, and her achievements should be noted among those of people of her gender who have made a mark in recent years. The first woman to be appointed executive head of the History of Parliament, she deserves recognition not only for vastly improving the working conditions of the staff, but also for meeting the challenges of the new technology of the 1990s. She took a personal interest in the welfare of the staff of the History, and appreciated the value of social events such as social gatherings at Speaker’s House and elsewhere in sustaining team spirit. By establishing friendships in the separate worlds of academia and the Palace of Westminster, she helped to erode the barriers between them.
 
‘Valerie was a stalwart supporter of the International Commission for the History of Representative Institutions (ICHPRI), serving as Secretary-General and Vice-President. She was active in convening the History’s seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, where she was a Senior Fellow. She was a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal Parliamentary History for 25 years, from its inception in 1982 until 2007.
 
‘In her life outside her professional work, Valerie enjoyed a long and happy marriage to the distinguished mathematician and vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol, Sir John Kingman.’
 
The funeral will be at Canford Crematorium, Bristol, on Thursday 5 April at 3 pm.

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Philip Priestley FSA died on 9 March aged 81. He was elected a Fellow of the Society in January 2003. The following is selected from an unsourced but apparently well-informed Wikipedia entry.
 
Philip T Priestley was born in Lincoln, and took a degree in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham (1957). During National Service he was an Electronics Instructor in the Royal Air Force. He worked for Kodak in the UK, and as an IT Manager installing large commercial computers at several locations, including four years with Eastman Kodak in the US, retiring from Kodak in 1993. He held patents in the fields of measuring small temperature differences and thermometric reaction instrumentation.
 
In retirement he expanded his interest in antique watches, especially those made in the US. His publications included Watch Case Makers of England. A History and Register of Gold and Silver Watch Case Makers of England: 1720–1920 (1994), Early Watch Case Makers of England 1631 to 1720 (2000), The Compendium of Chester Gold and Silver Marks 1570 to 1962: From the Chester Assay Office Registers (2004, with Maurice Ridgway FSA) and Aaron Lufkin Dennison, An Industrial Pioneer and his Legacy (2010).
 
He was a Member of Chiltern District Council for 26 years, and was made an Honorary Alderman in 2016. He was a Silver Star Fellow of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors Inc, a Liveryman of the Clockmakers' Company, and a Freeman of Lincoln and London.

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Tony Laughton has written this piece about his late wife Jane Laughton FSA, who died in October:
 
‘Jane was born in Stoke-on-Trent and was persuaded by her school to read a more “useful subject” such as modern languages at Birmingham University, rather than history which was her first love. After bringing up her two children she obtained a BA at Manchester University in Ancient History and Archaeology in 1981, before finding her true vocation with an MA in English Local History at Leicester University and subsequently a PhD at Cambridge, with a thesis on Aspects of the Social and Economic History of Late Medieval Chester 1350–c 1500 (1983). Cheshire was her home county and would later be the source for what she felt was her best work.
 
‘‘As a Research Fellow at Birmingham University, Jane worked in 1995–97 on an inter-disciplinary project on Urban Hierarchy and Functions in the East Midlands in the Late Middle Ages. This research provided the raw material for her contributions to many publications written while an Honorary Research Fellow at both Birmingham and Leicester Universities. These included: “Small Towns in the East and West Midlands in the Later Middle Ages: a comparison” (Midland History, 1999); “The urban hierarchy in the Later Middle Ages: A study of the East Midlands” (Urban History, 2001); “Seasonal patterns of trade in the Later Middle Ages: Buying and selling at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, 1400–1520” (Nottingham Medieval Studies, 2002), all in collaboration with Professor Christopher Dyer FSA; “Catesby Priory as consumer in the first half of the fifteenth century”, in The Market Place and the Place of the Market (2004).
 
‘While still working on the East Midlands, she was involved with the Rows Project at Chester, contributed a section on “Economy and society, 1350-1500” to the VCH’s first volume on Chester (2003), and made a detailed study of the remarkable Medieval beach market at Meols, published in The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast (2007). Using the primary source material uncovered in her PhD thesis she wrote in 2008 her best-known book, Life in a Medieval City Chester 1275–1520 (2008), a popular approach to the city’s urban and economic history. This told the story of the city from the point of view of the common folk rather than the gentry, the aspect of all her work that she most enjoyed.
 
‘In her final talk in 2017 on John de Macclesfield, c 1351–1422; Local Boy made Good, Jane made a tantalising but convincing case for John and his courtly friends being closely involved in the Medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This remains work-in-progress.’
 
Tony Laughton concludes with this from an obituary by Graeme White FSA, Emeritus Professor of English Local History at Chester University:
 
‘Behind all this went an enthusiasm for sharing the love of her subject with others: shown through talks to local societies and national conferences and through the encouragement she gave to the residents of her home village of Rainow, near Macclesfield, to research the history of their local community. Jane Laughton will be greatly missed, but she has made a lasting and important contribution to our understanding of the country’s late Medieval economy and society, and of Cheshire’s particular place within it. It is fitting that a collection of her notes and transcripts of documents has been donated to Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, where they will continue to benefit students of the history of the county.’

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We have two further reminiscences of Ray Sutcliffe FSA, who died in February, to add to those of Greg Bailey:

‘I was indeed sorry to learn of Ray’s death’, writes Vincent Megaw FSA. ‘I got to know Ray during my decade at Leicester. Ray, ever the man of parts, was involved as I was with the then British Universities Film Council and I also poached him for the Council for British Archaeology’s Publications Committee. Ray of course did his time Down Under, attracted to Flinders as it gradually grew to be the major player in maritime archaeology in the Southern Hemisphere. His general ease of manner concealed a director of film who knew exactly what he wanted, and through example how it should be done. I’ll miss those pub evenings whether in London, Leicester, Perth (the Western Australian one) or Adelaide. It seemed that Ray knew everyone in archaeology everywhere, so it was, due to Ray, that the University of Sydney came to be the owner of a number of the early Chronicles on film, left with the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission), the orphans of a deal with the BBC which never came off.’
 
‘I knew Ray Sutcliffe’, writes Andrew Oddy FSA, ‘over a number of years as a colleague in the world of archaeology and museums. He once told me that when he worked for the London County Council he was part of the team whose job it was to erect the blue plaques on buildings to record who lived there. He told me that on one occasion, when the plaque was installed, the team realised that it was on the next-door building. “We let it be” was his comment. More important, however, was Ray’s attempt to save all the unused “rushes” of film when Chronicle was closed down. Those were the days when the BBC sent film units to record digs which just might make a programme. Quite a lot of footage was never aired and Ray was too conscientious to “chuck it in the bin” as he had been told to do. Ray telephoned anybody who he thought might like some of this material. I never knew how successful he was at saving the archive but at least he tried.’