Obituary

OBITUARY MRS. NANCY PIERCY FOX, F.S.A. It is with much sorrow that the Society records the death of Mrs. Nancy Piercy Fox, F.S.A. which occurred on 30th March, 1966, after a short illness. Her many friends and colleagues among members of the Society will greatly miss her warm friendship and her energetic and scholarly work, and members of Council, of which she was a prominent member for thirteen years, will especially remember with gratitude her helpful presence among them. Nancy Piercy Fox graduated B.A., Liverpool, in Geography and History in 1931, reading Historical Geography with Professor Roxly and Professor Peet. From 1934 to 1935, she attended Six Mortimer Wheeler's courses at the London Museum. In 1936, she became Honorary Secretary of the Keston Field Club, of which she was a foremost member. In 1936, also, she became a member of the Kent Archreological Society, was its Local Secretary for the Bromley District since 1951, a.nd was elected to its Council in 1953. In 1957, she was admitted a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, whose meetings she frequently attended. During the war years, from 1941 to 1945, she sat on the Council of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archreological Society, a.nd interested herself in the archreology of Gloucestershire. From 1947 to 1956, in conjunction with the Keston Field Club, she organized a Regional Survey of Keaton, including its Geology, the use of land, and the archreology of the Mesolithic period, up to the 1840 Tithe Map. She directed excavations on Hayes Common and at Keaton Church, publishing her work on the latter in Archceo'logia Oantiana, lxiv. In the field of Romano-British studies, Mrs. Piercy Fox excavated the building at W arbank, Keaton, and published a detailed and scholarly paper on this in Archceowgia Oantiana, lxix. She also re-excavated the site of the supposed Roman Temple at Keaton, with part of the adjoining cemetery with its funerary structures. While actively interested in many aspects of archreology and local history, she initiated and conducted investigations on behalf of the Society into the problem of the Iron Age in Kent, in which she had made a detailed study, including the Coin Distribution Maps. To this end she directed excavations at the Iron Age Camp, known as Cresar's Camp, Keston, and at the Iron Age Camps at Squerries, Westerham, and Boughton Monchelsea, near Maidstone. As a result of this valuable 265 OBITUARY work, extending from 1955 to 1966, she was enabled largely to resolve the problem and to correlate the new knowledge she had gained. She was not, however, spared to see her work published, and this will be done as a memorial to her. This long and careful work, carried out with continued energy and scholarly application, will probably be seen to be her most useful and enduring contribution to the archreology of the South-East, casting, as it has done, fresh and important light upon the difficult problem of the British Iron Age. Her work brought her many friends, and the congenial hospitality accorded them by herself and her husband, Dr. E. V. Piercy Fox, who seconded her in all her undertakings, will long be remembered. G.W.M. 266