British Archaeology, no 28, October 1997: Obituaries

by Clive Partridge

The passing of Robert Kiln, insurance underwriter and amateur archaeologist, marks the end of an era in British archaeology. His contribution over the past 25 years has been inestimable. In the City he had a reputation as an astute, successful but fair-minded businessman. These attributes, and many more, he brought to archaeology, his most serious hobby. A great believer in amateur participation, he had that precious knack of enthusing and motivating people.

He will be long remembered for his role with Magnus Magnusson in starting the British Archaeological Awards. His intent was to encourage higher standards of fieldwork and excavation in the amateur ranks. He was also much involved in setting up the pressure group Rescue, whose national office still resides in Hertford where Kiln first made premises available. A lasting memorial to this generous man is the Robert Kiln Charitable Trust, which he founded in the early 1970s. Since then, it has distributed more than £1 million to conservation, the arts and archaeology, often supporting less fashionable but wholly deserving projects having difficulty finding funds elsewhere. His election as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and the honorary doctorate conferred on him by the University of Sheffield are fitting tributes to his impact on archaeology in the 1970s and 80s.

One memory I have of Robert Kiln is of when we were working together in the 1970s at Skeleton Green in Hertfordshire. Walking around supervising and encouraging new volunteers, he would absentmindedly reach down, in full flow on some topic or other, and with several loud cracks knock out dottle from his ever-present pipe on his wooden leg (he lost his leg to a shell-blast outside Antwerp in 1944, having seen action at D-Day with the Hertfordshire Yeomanry). The astonished and often agonised looks from the volunteers were a source of much amusement to us old hands who had seen it all before.

Robert John Kiln: born Shepperton, 14 May 1920; educated Merchant Taylor's School; joined Lloyds of London, 1936; set up RJ Kiln syndicate, 1962; Chairman, Lloyds Life Insurance, 1979; Diploma in Archaeology (London), 1965; founded the Hart Archaeological Unit, 1973; Chairman and (1996) President, East Herts Archaeological Society; died, 16 August 1997.

Clive Partridge was the Director of the Hart Archaeological Unit, and was joint author, with Robert Kiln, of Ware & Hertford: The Story of Two Towns (1994).

by Glenn Foard

With the sudden death of Alan Hannan, Northamptonshire has lost its most modest and congenial archaeological ambassador. An Australian whose first career was in education not archaeology, Hannan developed a passion for the historic landscape of Britain which always kept him from returning to his native land.

His first professional post was at Tewkesbury Borough, as one of the small band of curatorial archaeologists appointed in the early 1970s, in the first flush of rescue archaeology. However, county-based services were to become the norm and he soon moved onto the much larger challenge of managing the archaeology of Northamptonshire where he built up one of the first county archaeological units.

He steered the county through two decades of dramatic change in archaeological provision. Government grants for archaeology were not adequate to meet the increasing pace of development, but Hannan persuaded the county council to fund rescue excavations on several of their major road schemes. Such was, in the provinces at least, the origin of developer-funded archaeology. He also made skilful use of Manpower Services Commission and other funding sources to enable the unit to undertake rescue work with genuine research benefits, most notably in the Raunds Area Project.

With the growth of developer funding in the late 1980s, Hannan was one of the first unit managers to impose the separation of curatorial and contracting services which was the essential concomitant of the new commercial archaeology. This was a painful task but he always cared greatly about the welfare of his staff and when he retired in 1995 he left two teams well positioned to meet the challenges of the late 1990s.

Although he did conduct and publish excavations, from now on there will be increasing numbers of archaeologists who, like Hannan, must be judged first and foremost on the success of the teams that they built up and led.

Alan Hannan: born in Australia 6 May 1937; educated University High School, Melbourne, followed by a teaching certificate in New South Wales; teacher and lecturer New Guinea 1959-69; Ancient History & Archaeology BA Hons, University of Birmingham 1969-72; Borough Archaeologist, Tewkesbury 1972-76; County Archaeologist, Northamptonshire, 1976-95; MPhil in progress, University of Leicester; died 26 August 1997.

Glenn Foard is the County Archaeologist in Northamptonshire