Obituaries - Prof. Bryan Keith-Lucas, Norman Cook

OBITUARIES PROFESSOR BRYAN KEITH-LUCAS, C.B.E. Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas of Wye, who died on 7th November, 1996, aged 84, a Member of our Society and contributor to this Journal, was born on 1st August, 1912, at Fen Ditton, the son of the Cambridge physiologist, Dr Keith Lucas, F.R.S. When his father was killed flying in 1916 young Bryan's hyphenated surname was created as a memorial to him. From Gresham's School, Holt, Bryan proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read History and then Economics. Having qualified as a Solicitor in 1937 through the Town Clerk's department at Kensington Town Hall, he was appointed Assistant Solicitor to the royal borough in 1938. So began his active interest and participation in local government. Following military service during the Second World War when he was mentioned in dispatches, he moved from Kensington to Nottinghamshire County Council, before switching from local government to academic life on becoming a Senior Lecturer in Local Government at Oxford University in 1948. Four years later his first book was published in 1952, The English Local Government Franchise. From then to his most recent publications, Parish Affairs The Government of Kent under George I/I (1986), A Kentish Parson, edited with Dr G. M. Ditchfield (1991) and Wye in the Eighteenth Century (1995), the last two of which I have had the pleasure of reviewing in Archaeologia Cantiana, his main academic interests lay in local rather than central government and history. As the founding Professor of Political Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1964, and one of the first four Chairs in the Faculty of Social Sciences, he was then Chairman of the National Association of Parish Councils, a post which he occupied from 1964 to 1970. Having been Domestic Bursar at Nuffield College since 1957 Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas on moving to Canterbury sought to recreate the atmosphere of Oxford collegiate life in a modem campus setting. Immediately he was appointed Deputy Master of Eliot College and in 1970 became the first Master of Darwin College. Of the seven new universities founded in the early 1960s, the University of Kent exhibited 'the most concrete 351 OBITUARIES commitment to a college system' (The Daily Telegraph, 23rd November, 1996). Although a great believer in grassroots democracy, he justified the existence of Senior Common Rooms: 'I do not believe that undergraduates wish to spend all their time with elderly professors' and 'I know that elderly professors do not wish to spend all their time with undergraduates'. Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas retired from the University in 1977, but continued to be heavily involved as President of the then Kent Society. For five years he taught politics part-time at the King's School in Canterbury, where he promoted the King's Parliament as a debating society. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent at Canterbury in June 1980 and in 1983 he was appointed C.B.E. His involvement and interest in Kentish affairs covered much ground. On coming to Kent he immediately jointed the Kent Archaeological Society in 1965. Following his retirement he returned to writing, much to the long-term benefit of Kentish history. In all that he produced he was a most meticulous researcher. For Volume C of Archaeologia Cantiana (1984) he submitted an article on 'Kentish Turnpikes'. Running to 24 pages and analysing the Bills, Trustees' meetings, administrative problems, opposition to turnpikes, the officers of the Trusts and the decline of the turnpikes, it concluded with a map showing turnpike roads in 1851 and an alphabetical list of Kentish Turnpikes, with the date of the first Act of Parliament. Additionally and these are just a few examples he has served as President of the Kent Federation of Amenity Societies, of the Wye Historical Society and of the Kent Association of Parish Councils. Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas will be greatly missed by all who had the privilege of knowing him. An immensely kind and courteous man he served the county well during the 32 years falling between 1964 and 1996. JOHN WHYMAN NORMAN COOK, 1906-1994 Norman Charles Cook was born in the family house, on Sittingbourne Road, in Maidstone, on 24 January, 1906. He was educated at Maidstone's Grammar School, where he became head boy. Despite the attractions of athletics, he developed interests in archaeology, geology and botany. He began as an assistant to H.J. Elgar in Maidstone's historic museum in 1924 and after acquiring a University of London external B.A. degree, he became Sub-Curator and Keeper of Archaeology. He joined the Kent Archaeological Society in 1929 and his succinct notes 352 OBITUARIES from the Museum, which at that time monitored the county, became a much used feature of Archaeologia Cantiana. His energy and critical abilities were deployed with R.F. Jessop at Ightham's Rose Wood, where he acquired the nickname 'Bill', after one of the Benjamin Harrison's forbears, and at Bigberry, Harbledown, two fundamental excavations. A first-rate photographer, he toured Kent's stone-built long barrows, with Stuart Piggott, an enterprise which led to observations upon their possible European mainland origins. His wife Dorothy (nee Waters) from Maidstone, whom he married in 1934, was an accomplished artist, who developed the nuances of pottery illustration. In 1937, he was invited by Alexander Keiller to succeed Stuart Piggott at the Morvem Institute of Archaeological Research at Avebury. He saw, because of the unaccommodating, inert, attitudes of A.J. Golding, a bleak future at Maidstone, and thus the invitation was accepted. The war in 1939 brought about a cessation of activities at Avebury and, eventually he moved into Air Photographic Intelligence. After the war he became Curator of the Tudor House Museum at Southampton, whence he visited H.J. Case's and the present writer's barrow excavations at Poole. In 1950, he became Keeper of the Guildhall Museum in London and, later, designed the Museum of London. He was Secretary of the Museums Association and later its President. An F.S.A. in 1949, he was made a Vice-President in 1967. Wells was selected as a place for retirement. Here he and Dorothy remade the museum and, in time, led the Guild of Cathedral Guides. Ever a brilliant and entertaining lecturer his cathedral tours delighted his listeners. He had an encyclopaedic memory of Kent's landscapes and antiquities, and, remembering his own early days, encouraged all who sought to achieve something in archaeology. Although one of the most successful museum directors of this century, he was sometimes sad that opportunities for academic endeavours in archaeology had been so few in the 1930s. He is remembered with affection. PAUL ASHBEE 353