Arthur Gerald Norcott Brodribb, M.A., Ph.D.

Gerald Brodribb was born in St Leonards-on-Sea on 21 May 1915, the son of a doctor and a descendant of the Victorian actor, Sir Henry Irving, whose real name was John Henry Brodribb. Gerald was educated at Eastbourne College and read classics and English at University College, Oxford. Cricket was his ruling passion from childhood; he took an MCC coaching course and lost no opportunity to play in a match. A medium-fast bowler for his college team at Oxford, he also represented the MCC and the Jesters at various times. After graduating he became a schoolmaster, teaching first at St Peter’s School, Seaford, later at Christ’s Hospital, Repton and Canford until, in 1956, he bought his old prep school, Hydneye House, near Hastings, and took over the headship. In 1968 his teaching career came to an abrupt end, along with Hydneye House, when the local education authority planned to build a comprehensive school on the site. Brodribb published some thirty books on cricket and it was as a leading historian of the game that he was elected FSA in 1971, though his subsequent work as an archaeologist would have qualified him equally well for Fellowship. His anthology entitled The English Game came out in 1948, followed in 1950 by a slim volume, Cricket in Fiction, which Brodribb typeset and printed himself. Other publications are The Book of Cricket Verse (1953); Hit for Six (1960) and The Lost Art (1993), a history of underarm bowling. He also wrote biographies of the Edwardian batsman, G. L. Jessop, the Sussex player Maurice Tate and the eccentric Nicholas Wanostrocht who, like Brodribb, ran a prep school.Wanostrocht’s establishment flourished in the mid-nineteenth century in Blackheath but, again like Brodribb, his passion was cricket, which he played under the nom de plume of Nicholas Felix so that parents would not know he was absent from teaching. Brodribb’s publication Felix on the Bat, being a memoir of Nicholas Felix (1962) includes a facsimile of the original Felix on the Bat, written by Wanostrocht in 1845. Secondary to Brodribb’s preoccupation with the history of cricket was his interest in archaeology but in retirement it figured much more prominently in his activities. With typical industry he studied at London University’s Institute of Archaeology and, in 1985, was awarded a doctorate for his thesis on Roman building materials. Most of Brodribb’s life was spent in Sussex and for some years he had been convinced that excavation of the Roman ironworking site at Beauport Park, between Battle and Hastings, would reveal important remains. Using divining rods, he uncovered evidence of a substantial building in an area of the park designated for the new Hastings golf course and persuaded the authorities to exclude this piece of land from their plans. Later, in the late 1960s, excavating with Henry Cleere, Brodribb’s hunch proved correct when a remarkably well-preserved bath-house, one of the most complete Roman buildings in Britain, was discovered. The dig produced hundreds of tile fragments stamped with the CL BR insignia of the Classis Britannica all of which Brodribb recorded, classified and published in several learned papers. This led him to a broader study of brick and tile, extending over most of the Roman Empire, and his publication, Roman Brick and Tile (1987) influenced scholars to re-evaluate their usefulness for interpretation purposes. Brodribb campaigned, without success, to have the site taken into guardianship but, undeterred, he arranged for volunteers to erect a temporary cover to keep the building waterproof . As a founder member of the Beaupark Archaeological Trust he worked hard to raise funds to provide a permanent visitor and study centre on the site and it is regretable that he did not live to see his plans come to fruition. Always the teacher, Brodribb regularly visited local schools to encourage an interest in archaeology and ran cricket and football coaching sessions for children. A thoughtful and kindly man, he died on 7 October 1999.