Professor Owen Ashmore, M.A.

Owen Ashmore was born in Disley, Cheshire, on 7 November 1920. He and his twin brother, Alec, were educated at King Edward VII School at Lytham St Annes, and Owen went on to Peterhouse to read history. His studies were interrupted by active service in the Middle East and Italy as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. On graduation, he took up a teaching post in Derbyshire while taking classes in industrial archaeology and local history for the extra-mural department of the University of Manchester. In 1950 this part-time work became full-time when, his skills as a teacher and administrator, as well as his scholarship, having been recognized, he was appointed resident tutor in north-west Derbyshire. Ashmore progressed through the posts of tutor, senior assistant and acting director to, in 1976, professor and director of the department, from which he retired in 1982. Unfortunately, his dedicated work, in both adult education and the promotion of industrial archaeology and local history as special studies, was undermined by the funding restrictions imposed on the universities in the early 1980s, and the once flourishing extra-mural department was seriously curtailed. Fieldwork was always an intrinsic element in all Ashmore's courses; his wide knowledge of the region and of written sources enabled him to identify areas of research for himself and his students. His findings were always written up lucidly and concisely and illustrated with carefully drawn plans and diagrams. He was an early member of the Industrial Archaeology Society, a founder member of the Manchester Region Industrial Archaeological Society, secretary of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society from 1964-9, subsequently a vice-president, and treasurer of the Chetham Society from 1972-83. He published papers in a number of journals, and his two important books, The Industrial Archaeology of Lancashire (1969) and The Industrial Archaeology of the North-west (1982) contain records of machines and buildings which no longer exist and of others that are under constant threat. Sadly, ill health following his retirement prevented his writing the wider history of the region he had planned. He died on 10 July 1995.