Happy Birthday Canterbury Archaeological Trust
More than two hundred people packed Christ Church College Hall on 14 June 1975, at a public meeting organised by Canterbury Archaeological Society. Barry Cunliffe, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford, took the Chair. Speakers, including Frank Jenkins, Nicholas Brooks, Martin Biddle and Tom Hassall, emphasised the need for further investigation of the city’s archaeology, the importance of urban archaeology and the value of forming a full-time professional unit.
Rapid economic development within Canterbury gave urgency to the initiative. Other historic towns such as Winchester, York, Lincoln and Oxford, already had their own units of professional archaeologists. At the end of the meeting, the Archaeological Committee for Canterbury (ACC) was set up, consisting of representatives from the City Council, the Department of the Environment, the Cathedral, the University, the Council for British Archaeology and a number of eminent archaeologists. Their brief was to plan the creation of a unit and to appoint a director. The Department of the Environment funded a Field Officer for six months to prepare a report on the archaeological potential of the city.
With Tim Tatton-Brown in place as director, Canterbury Archaeological Trust was born in April 1976. The City Council supplemented the DoE grant and Tim was provided with an office in the old Municipal Buildings in Dane John; Paul Bennett started work as supervisor of the Cakebread Robey site in Castle Street, where the Roman temple was found.
Twenty years ago a second initiative established the Friends of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. Since then, the Friends have raised around £130,000 to support the Trust’s operations and provided many hours of unpaid help. Anniversary celebrations for this year took place at Darwin College, the University of Kent, when Tim Tatton-Brown gave a series of lectures, taking as his theme the archaeology and architectural history of the cathedral.