Paul Ashbee, MA. D.Litt, FSA, FRSAI
Elected as a Patron of the KAS last year, Paul Ashbee’s work over five decades has laid much of the foundations of archaeological knowledge today, particularly of prehistory.
Born just as the first world war was drawing to a close and growing up in Bearsted, he shone at history and geography at school in Maidstone, and later at German, although a ‘cut glass’ accent, combined with reaching 6 foot by the age of 12, generated teasing. The nearby County Library meant access to archaeology texts, and lunchtimes were often spent in Maidstone Museum. Fascinated by the worked flint displayed, and under the tutelage of curator Norman Cook, Paul began his own search, finding axe roughouts at Thurnham and Detling, besides locating various surface industries. Some of Bearsted’s older residents still remember him revealing the wall tiles and opus signinum floors of Thurnham’s Roman Villa in 1933.
He joined the Royal West Kent Regiment in 1939 and gained a lance corporal’s stripe in 1940; the accent seemed to help. When at Haverfordwest he was interviewed for special work and was asked, amongst other things, if he knew what ‘rundfunk’ meant. His ability with the German language was used from time to time in Germany and from 1946 in the Control Commission for Germany. Paul’s English-accented German was thought useful by many. In Germany until 1949, his mind still returned to matters archaeological and the problem of breaking into the profession, as he had seen Aachen, all the megalithic chambers near Osnabruck, Koln Lindenthal, the Eifel and various other places.
He approached the University of London’s Institute of Archaeology and was sent by a kindly, encouraging, Gordon Childe to have a word with Dr Wheeler – as Sir Mortimer was then known. Whilst working in 1949 on the Wheeler excavations at St Albans he met Richmal, Secretary, and later President, of the University of London’s Archaeological Society, which had a programme of talks and visits. It was a fortuitous empty seat next to hers on top of a Baker Street double-decker bus that led to recruitment for the 1951 excavations at Nawan Fort in Cornwall and later to their marriage. They celebrated their Golden Wedding in style last year.
Between 1949 and 1976, Paul excavated barrows, round and long, for the then Ministry of Works, using Cyril Fox’s ideas and Wheeler’s discipline. Of note was Fussell’s Lodge, the Horslip long barrow and the Amesbury group. In the climate of subsidised excavations, he realised that barrows were the only type of monument that could be fully excavated. Throughout the ’50s he averaged 2 barrows a year, taking around 7 months to write up each excavation. It talks of growing up with prehistory in an atmosphere of independent endeavour, taking responsibility for each step of a project.
Only an outline of Paul’s numerous undertakings is possible here, but amongst the best known is Sutton Hoo in the ’50s with Rupert Bruce Mitford, when the re-excavation of the field barrow and the dumped spoil from the 30’s allowed the recovery of the many pieces of the kingsbury funerary gear which had been broken by the collapse of the mortuary structure. He was involved in the innovative Experimental Earthworks Project, a long term experiment which set up banks and ditches, complete with buried artefacts, in 1960 and ’63 at Overton Down and Wareham respectively, to study the process of primary, weathering and denudation.
Besides periods active in Ireland, he spent 17 years returning to Halangy Down on the Isles of Scilly. the individuality of the island environment having great attraction, the archaeology spanning nearly 3000 years, “the stone building remains being a palimpsest of fishing and agriculture through the ages”. Paul recalls Harold Wilson turning up on site as he walked around St Mary’s every Easter Monday. A by-product of these excavations was the 1974 publication of Ancient Scilly, followed by full publication of Halangy Down in 1996.
Other landmark publications have been The Bronze Age Round Barrow in Britain in 1960 and its counterpart The Earthern Long Barrow in Britain ten years later, The Ancient British, in 1970 the 10 years from 1978, and the Wilsford Shaft report produced in 1989.
Despite having lived in Norfolk since his appointment to the University of East Anglia in 1968, he suffers from bouts of nostalgia for Kent. His early experiences with hops and fruit have produced a frustrated agriculturalist which has some outlet in his recent Vice Presidency of the Norfolk Agricultural Association. The annual Norfolk Show is always enjoyable, particularly when translating for German buyers of Norfolk pedigree cattle!
Admitting also to acute bibliophilitis, his enthusiasm probably saved his life during the war. Unable to resist the sight of a bookcase crammed with texts in gothic script, he entered a ruined house near Kleve in the north-Rhineland to investigate. A shell landed directly outside the window, where he had stood but a moment before.
Romantic English verse is another passion; his students often had Kipling quoted at them – ‘Puck’s song is full of archaeology...’. His love of historical architecture was, from time to time, put to use during his time as an RCHME Commissioner between 1975 and 85.
Although Paul asserts that ‘I am an Ancient Monument’, he continues, despite ‘official’ retirement from the UEA in 1983, to be prolific in his output and has seen nearly 40 works published in the intervening years. Currently he is working on The Prehistory of Kent, to be published in Summer 2004. KAS members, and all with an interest in our county, look forward to his work and many others to follow in the future.
The Editor