David Tyrwhitt-Drake Clarke

The following obituary for David Tyrwhitt-Drake Clarke FSA (1923 – 2009) was contributed by Christopher Young, FSA

David Clarke, formerly Curator of the Colchester and Essex Museum died on 27 November.  He was born in St Albans on 30 September, 1923, and educated at Haileybury College.  He won a minor scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1941 but his time there was interrupted by war service in the Royal Signals in Italy, attached to the Special Boat Service.  After the War he completed his degree in Classics and Classical Archaeology at Cambridge in 1947.  During 1947/8 he held the Sir Charles Walston and Christopher James Studentships at the British School of Archaeology in Athens.  This was followed by a year as Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at Farouk I University in Alexandria.  He returned to England in 1949.

David’s commitment to archaeology and to museums was lifelong and he took every opportunity to visit and examine sites.  After the armistice, while still in the Army, his squad travelled from their base up the Italian peninsula, giving him the chance to visit many classical sites.  To provide a pretext for this journey, the squad carried with them a sealed box, full of stones, which they were ‘delivering’ to a mythical army base.  He also took the opportunity to travel in Greece and the Aegean and in Egypt.  During his time at Cambridge he dug in vacations for Sheppard Frere in Canterbury, where he first met his wife Joan Radcliffe Kirk, also a Fellow of the Society.  They were married in 1957.

He had catalogued the collections of the British School in Athens and of the university museum collections in Alexandria.  From 1949 to 1963, David was Keeper of Antiquities at Leicester City Museums.  From 1963 until his retirement in 1988, he was Curator of the Colchester and Essex Museum.  At both museums he made considerable changes.  At Leicester, he redisplayed the archaeological galleries twice, originated the project for a museum at Jewry Wall and totally refitted, catalogued and displayed Newarke Houses and Chantry House.  At Colchester, he reinvigorated the Museum, greatly increasing its staff.  The Castle was totally re-fitted and the archaeological displays renewed.  After nine years effort, Holy Trinity Church was acquired and opened in 1973 as a museum of country life and crafts.  Tymperleys was opened in 1987 as a museum of Colchester clocks.

He was also active in promoting as rescue archaeology in response to unprecedented development pressures.  At Leicester he carried out excavations in the town before creating the first Field Archaeology post there.  In Colchester, in 1964 he refounded the Colchester Excavation Committee which led directly to the formation of the Colchester Archaeological Trust which has added so much to our knowledge of Colchester and its environs.  In particular, David’s efforts made possible a whole series of major excavations during the 1960’s.  These included the North Hill mosaics in 1965, Gosbecks (1968) and Sheepen (1970) and laid the foundation for the later successes of the Colchester Archaeological Trust which he supported throughout his time at Colchester.

David’s influence reached far outside the museums in which he worked.  He was fiercely committed both to field archaeology and to museums.  He regarded the development of professionalism in museums as essential and played a major role in training and education of museum professionals.  He was a tutor for the Museums Diploma of the Museums Association for many years, thereby contributing directly to the training of many curators.

He also served at various times on the Council of the Association, its Education Committee, of which he was at one time Chairman, and as Chairman of examiners.  He also served on its Ethics working party.  He was instrumental in establishing the Association’s Code of Ethics.  This has subsequently been further developed but is still a key document in the museum world.  David helped initiate the greater understanding of the need for such a code and also for compliance with it.  He also served the museums profession through his time as Secretary and Chair of the Museum Assistants Group which pressed for improved conditions and standards, and as a member of the Paymaster General’s Committee on Provincial Museums in 1971/2.

He was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1962.  He was also a Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society and Fellow of the Museums Association.  He was a member of many county and local archaeological societies and Honorary Editor from 1972 to 1986 of the Essex Archaeological Society.  He worked hard to promote interest in archaeology and actively involved himself with local societies and as a lecturer and author of popular booklets.

After his retirement, he and Joan moved to Combe in Oxfordshire where he lived for nearly 20 years.  During that time, he continued his active interests in fieldwork and museums and their collections.  He took great interest in the Roman villa at Stonesfield and researched the background of the Stonesfield Embroidery which was acquired by the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.  This is an early 18^th Century depiction of the great mosaic at Stonesfield which was discovered in 1712.  David’s research did much to elucidate its history.  He was also very active within the Friends of the Oxfordshire Museum in the successful campaign to prevent its closure at a time of County Council stringency.  During his retirement, he also provided great support to the museum staff by sharing with them his knowledge and assisting in collections research.

David combined great knowledge of artefacts and archaeology with a passion for the proper curation and use of museums in their local communities.  He believed very much in what is now termed outreach but also that this had to be based on a very firm foundation of scholarship and professional standards of curation. He fought fiercely to maintain the independence of museums as centres of scholarship, learning and their communities.  During his career he was able to demonstrate his commitment both in the museums for which he was directly responsible and in his wider service for the museums profession.  He did this despite suffering for many years from narcolepsy, diagnosed only after a car accident, which meant that, rather disconcertingly, he would go briefly to sleep while standing and talking without apparently interrupting his train of thought.

He was also a devoted family man bringing up four children with Joan and enjoying the company of his ten grandchildren, and was active in the communities in which they lived, first in Wivenhoe and then in Combe.  Ill-health curtailed his activities in recent years, particularly after Joan’s death in 2007, which he felt greatly, but he maintained his interest in archaeology almost to the last.  He will be greatly missed.