Obituaries ANDREW SAUDERS 1931 -2009 It is with great regret that we report the death of Andrew Saunders on the 13th of March. He was a founder member of the Society, our third President 1968- 72 and a Vice-President until 1992. We are indebted to his wife Gillian Hutchinson for some reminiscences of his early life. Andrew was born in Stafford on 22 September 1931 and moved to Cornwall as a small boy when his father was appointed Town Clerk of St Austell. [Pictured left in the 1990s] He went away to Magdalen College School, Oxford as a chorister shortly before his 9th birthday. At school he became passionately interested in history. After writing an essay on Cornish tin mining he was made a bard of the Gorsedd (Car An Stenoryon – Friend of the Tinners) at the age of 17. After visiting an excavation in the Fal estuary, Andrew announced to his parents that he wanted to be an archaeologist. His father arranged for him to meet Bryan O’Neil, the then Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments. O’Neil’s wife Helen invited him to join her excavation of a Roman villa site in Gloucestershire and after that he worked with the O’Neils for two seasons in the Isles of Scilly. After graduating in history from Magdalen College, Oxford, Andrew joined the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate of the Ministry of Works in 1954. He inspected several Cornish sites in the company of Dorothy Dudley. While field- walking at Goonhilly they were accosted by military guards who insisted on escorting these two dangerous spies from the site! Andrew spent his working life with the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, his career culminating as Chief Inspector. His major interest was in medieval and later fortifications, as exemplified by his work at Launceston Castle from 1961 to 1983, published in 2006 (Excavations at Launceston Castle, Cornwall, Society for Medieval Archaeology). Members may also recall his work at the round at Castle Gotha (Cornish Archaeology 21 1982). A fuller tribute will follow in Cornish Archaeology. In the meantime we extend our deepest sympathy to his wife Gillian and daughter Anna. Henrietta Quinnell ROY ALLEN Roy Allen was a long-standing member of our Society, having joined in 1963. He lived in London but had ties with Cornwall and was especially fond of West Penwith. He was particularly interested in prehistory and was a member of the Prehistoric Society. He attended a lot of our Society events in the 1970s and 80s, and also those organised by the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of Exeter University. A photo published on our web site may remind some of our long-standing members of him. He was definitely an amateur, a ‘lover’ of archaeology in the best sense. He sealed his affection for the subject by leaving our Society a generous legacy, as well as one to the Royal Institute of Cornwall. The legacy is very timely, with the Society’s practical activities having expanded so much in recent years, an expansion which he would have been very glad to see and to help in future to assist. Henrietta Quinnell [If you have any information or anecdotes about Roy Allen, please send them to newsletter@cornisharchaeology.org.uk] NORMAN QUINNELL Members will be deeply saddened to learn that our Vice President and past President Norman Quinnell died on 13 April 2008. One of CAS’s great stalwarts, Norman joined the Society in the 1960s, was a member of the committee from 1980, and President from 1991 to 1994. The Society thrived under his unassuming and common--sense leadership, and his contribution to Cornish archaeology, to CAS and to its members was huge, and generously given. Norman’s knowledge of the field archaeology of the South West was unparalleled. Working as a field investigator, one of the unsung, and seemingly weatherproof, heroes of the Ordnance Survey, and then with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, Norman visited, described and surveyed hundreds upon hundreds of sites both in Cornwall and beyond the Tamar – information which has been gratefully received as a cornerstone of the local Historic Environment Records. Seeing the initials ‘NVQ’ on the OS record cards has always been taken as a hallmark of quality. Norman’s exacting professionalism also stood out in major programmes of fieldwork on the Isles of Scilly and on Bodmin Moor, where, with Martin Fletcher, he surveyed a huge area with relentless commitment (178 square kilometres in just 18 months, to be precise). It was Norman too, again with Martin, who produced the definitive and superlative 1985 survey of Tintagel Island, a milestone in the study of early medieval Cornwall. Members of CAS will have a shared sense of loss and join in expressing our sympathies to Henrietta and family members. -- Peter Rose PAUL ASHBEE  (Archaeologist and Prehistorian)  23rd June 1918 - 19 August 2009 Paul Ashbee, one of the last pioneers of post-war rescue archaeology, has died aged 91 after a short hard fight with cancer. Paul came into archaeology after war service in the army, and by ability and commitment became one of the best respected British prehistorians of the last sixty years. He was still engaged in research and writing up to his death. Paul grew up near Maidstone in Kent, his interest in local antiquities and informal excavation encouraged by the Museum curator Norman Cook. Military service in the Royal West Kent Regiment and then with the Government Control Commission for Germany until 1949 provided a wide range of practical skills and a good knowledge of German. On leaving the army he made contact with archaeologists in London. Brian O’Neil, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, asked him to direct excavations at Porthcressa on the Isles of Scilly and subsequently arranged training in the Ministry of Public Building &Works drawing office; here Ashbee developed his distinctive illustrative style which he was to use throughout his life. Gordon Childe and Mortimer Wheeler at London University’s Institute of Archaeology agreed to admit Ashbee to study, as an ex-service man, for the Diploma in Archaeological Studies 1950-52. Archaeological posts were few in the early 1950s. Ashbee took the practical step of studying for a Diploma in Education at Bristol. This ensured that Ashbee never got caught up, as many others did, in a continuous sequence of rescue excavations for financial reasons. He taught history at Forest Hill School on the borders of London and Kent and dug and wrote in the vacations and out of school hours. . In 1969 his growing reputation as an excavator and his wealth of published work led to the invitation to become the first archaeologist at the University of East Anglia, a post he held as Senior Lecturer until retirement in 1983. In 1984 he was awarded a DLitt from Leicester University. He had been elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in 1958, which meant that for the last year of his life he belonged to a small group of privileged Fellows of over fifty years standing whose did not pay fees. He was a member of the Royal Commission for Ancient Monuments from 1975 to 1985. Ashbee’s work concentrated on sites of Neolithic and Bronze Age date in Southern England. He became especially interested in barrows, and did more than any other excavator to establish good stratigraphic practice on these sites and each publication was enriched by relevant background research. To refer to just two: the Early Neolithic long barrow at Fussell’s Lodge, Wilts, dug in 1957 (Archaeologia C 1966) is still crucial in the debate on complex prehistoric funerary practices. The Bronze Age Wilsford shaft, 30m  deep, near Stonehenge remains the focus of discussion about the ritual purpose of such deep excavation (Wilsford Shaft: Excavations 1960-62, 1989, English Heritage with M Bell and E Proudfoot). He used his barrow excavation expertise with R Bruce- Mitford on the Saxon site of Sutton Hoo 1964-69. As early as 1960 Ashbee produced the first of his overviews, The Bronze Age Round Barrow in Britain (Dent), still a classic work of reference. This was followed by The Earthen Long Barrow in Britain (Dent, 1970) and The Ancient British (Geo-books, 1978). In excavation and in teaching Ashbee enjoyed supporting younger archaeologists in whom he saw promise. The present author in 1960 was treated to a detailed demonstration of lighting a primus stove – then an essential piece of excavation equipment – and remembers the sentence ‘If you can master the essentials you will never go far wrong’. In such ways many life-long friendships, with all the riches of wisdom passed on to the coming generation, benefited archaeology in Britain as a whole. Cornwall remained important to Ashbee throughout his career. He was assistant to R Bruce-Mitford on the excavations of early medieval settlement at Mawgan Porth 1950-2 and contributed a chapter to the report. He returned to Scilly to dig, both a complex exercise at the megalith of Bant’s Carn which involved reconstruction, and a long investigation of the prehistoric and Roman –period settlement on the slopes below at Halangy; this was published as a whole volume of Cornish Archaeology in 1996. At Halangy Ashbee met Harold Wilson, on his regular Scillonian vacations, and a friendship  developed, which helped inform the subsequent Labour government on archaeological issues. His 1974 Ancient Scilly (David & Charles) remains the most comprehensive study of the Islands’ archaeology. Ashbee was President of the Cornwall Archaeological Society 1976-80 and subsequently Vice-President, positions he saw very much as providing support to amateurs in archaeology. His home county of Kent also remained special to him and was the focus of a long range of publications in his 80s cumulating in Kent in Prehistoric Times (Tempus 2005). Ashbee enjoyed a long, happy and supportive marriage with Richmal Disher whom he had met at a field school St Albans in 1949 and married in 1952. Richmal ran many of Ashbee’s excavations and was warmly acknowledged in his publications. He considered her a more literate person than he was and deferred to her judgment on the written word. Richmal was also an authoress, and niece and literatary executor of Richmal Crompton (‘Just Willliam’). After Richmal’s death in 2005 Ashbee proudly became President of the ‘Just William Society’, although nothing could fill the gap left in the last years of his life.  Paul Ashbee is survived by his son Edward, daughter Kate and grandchildren Jonathan and Francesca. © 2012, Cornwall Archaeological Society Registered Charity 1055654 Paul digging at Halangy on Scilly in 1950 and is reproduced by permission of the Isles of Scilly Museum. PETER GATHERCOLE, 1929-2010 Our scholarly, much loved and highly respected former President, Peter Gathercole, died on October 11 2010. Born into a Norfolk family of grocers, his deep-seated love of Cornwall began early with wartime evacuation to Truro and then Bude. An early love of history developed into archaeology which he studied first at Cambridge and then at the Institute of Archaeology in London. He became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, with socialist beliefs which he held throughout his life. Marriage and the birth of a son at a young age caused him to take the first job on offer, a traineeship at Birmingham City Museum under its benign keeper of archaeology Adrian Oswald (the son of Terra Sigillata Oswald). While there, Peter earned much-needed extra money directing rescue excavations, including important work on Clausentium - Roman Southampton, for the then Ministry of Works. His next curatorship, for a year, was at Scunthorpe. In 1959 and for the next ten years Peter discovered a new world and a fresh passion, Pacific ethnography, at the University of Otago in New Zealand. In that country Peter will be long honoured for helping to establish a fully functioning Department of Anthropology and Archaeology run jointly by Otago Museum and University. The teaching and practice of modern archaeology in New Zealand owes much to Peter's expertise and enthusiasm, imbibed at Cambridge and at London and amid the discomfort of rescue archaeology. He nurtured these Pacific ties all his life, returning to Dunedin to teach a summer course in 2003; he cherished his honorary fellowship there, which carried the title of Professor. Museums called again after Otago, first Oxford's Pitt-Rivers Museum in 1968, then a ten-year directorship at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge. He was the first to chair the UK Museum Ethnographers Group. Then it was but a step to Darwin College as its Dean; he retired in 1994 as an Emeritus Fellow. Peter's early association with Cornwall led in later years to the purchase of a house at Veryan and close attachment to our Society. He served as President 1997-2000 and subsequently as a Vice-President. He continued many Presidential duties for an extra year or so, as his successor was temporarily unable to undertake many of these. His wise counsel helped to guide the Society through a difficult period and the successful 2003 symposium, on Archaeology and the Media, was very much his brain child. Some of his most valuable work during his Presidency came from taking on the then vacant editorship of our journal. He saw three volumes into print, including Volume 35, Paul Ashbee's important report on his excavations at Halangy Down in the Isles of Scilly: for this especially we shall always be in his debt. We suspect that many members who came to know and value Peter as our President were unaware of his very distinguished and varied past career. With the death of this most unusual, generous and amiable scholar the Society has lost a staunch friend. Our heartfelt sympathies go to his four children and his partner of twenty years, Bobbie Wells. Nicholas Thomas and Henrietta Quinnell