Robert John Kiln, Hon.D.Litt.

Robert Kiln was born in Shepperton on 14 May 1920 and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, which he left at the age of sixteen to join Lloyds of London. He became a member of Sir Matthew Drysdale's non-marine box at Lloyds in 1938 and, like many young city workers, joined the Honourable Artillery Company. He later transferred to the less sartorially smart Hertfordshire Yeomanry and took part in the D-Day landings with the 86th Field Regiment Royal Artillery. He survived fierce fighting as the troops advanced across northern France but in September 1944 he was severely wounded by a shell-burst outside Antwerp and lost a leg. His active service experiences were later published under the title D-Day to Arnhem, (1993). Kiln rejoined the Drysdale syndicate in 1946 and over the next sixteen years earned an international reputation as a leading underwriter specialising in excess of loss reinsurance. But he was not only respected for his astute judgement and technical expertise; his dealings with his Names was always ethical and scrupulously fair. He was, in fact, a member of the Committee of Lloyd's three times between 1970 and 1980 but his conviction of the need for radical reform of many of the out-moded practices was not shared by his fellow underwriters and he resigned in 1961. Kiln's faithful service to his Names was, however, repaid when, in 1962, he founded his own agency and syndicate, R. J. Kiln and Company. It was touch-and-go for the first few years but in 1968 the agency began to show a substantial profit, much of it acquired from accounts with Commonwealth countries and the development of third world markets, rather than from the more traditional American sources. Some of these profits formed the nucleus of the Robert Kiln Charitable Trust, for which he set aside shares in his independent firm. Grants were distributed for music (his first wife was a talented musician), conservation, education and, increasingly as the Trust grew, archaeology. From the 1970s until his death twenty years later, Kiln gave more than £l million to archaeology, mostly in modest amounts of £500 - £1,000, to enable small units, often organized by young, amateur-volunteers, to embark on a wide range of excavation and conservation projects or to buy up-to-date equipment. He donated larger grants to the Universities of London and Durham, and Sheffield awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of the initial impetus he gave to the archaeology department's Outer Hebrides project. Kiln was an early supporter of Rescue, the Trust for British Archaeology; he arranged the organization's first office at 15A Bull Plain, Hertford, and was its treasurer from 1971-6. He became known to a wider audience through his association with Magnus Magnusson in the Chronicle awards for archaeology, originally sponsored by BBC Television. When the BBC's sponsorship ended in 1980, Kiln played a major role in establishing the British Archaeological Awards on a permanent basis and they remain one of the most effective instruments for publicising archaeology to the general public, developers, Members of Parliament and the media, and in setting standards of excellence in the practice of archaeology nationwide. Sponsors in the various categories have included I.B.M. (U.K.) Ltd; the Virgin Group; the Wedgwood Group; the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club; English Heritage; Cadw; Historic Scotland; Channel Four and British Petroleum. Kiln himself personally sponsored the Pitt Rivers Award for amateur or independent archaeology, a cause very close to his heart. But he was more than just a benefactor; despite his wooden leg he worked as a volunteer on local digs, especially in Hertford where he lived, and obtained the postgraduate diploma in archaeology at London University, in 1965, at a time when the anxieties and pressures of setting up his own enterprise would have been enough for most people. Kiln founded the Hart Archaeological Unit in 1973 and published, jointly with Clive Partridge, Ware and Hertford: the Story of Two Towns in 1994. He died on 16 August 1997.