Jean Le Patourel

Hilda Elizabeth Jean Le Patourel (1915—2011)

 Fellow Peter Addyman has contributed the following tribute to Jean Le Patourel, one of that small number of Fellows who had been a Fellow for more than fifty years. Peter recalls that ‘I first met her in the mid-1950s when sent to her with the medieval pottery from a schoolboy excavation I had directed. I remember being rapidly set off in what turned out to be the right research direction, then fed rather good tea and cakes in her home in Ilkley.’

‘Jean Le Patourel, who died on 20 January 2011, aged ninety-five, was a lecturer in the Department of Extra Mural Studies at the University of Leeds from the 1960s until her retirement in 1981. She came to Leeds when her husband, the medievalist John Le Patourel, was appointed to the chair of History in 1945 and began to develop her own interest in medieval culture, especially the medieval ceramics of Yorkshire. Little was known about these at the time and Jean soon established herself as the regional expert, publishing specialist reports in archaeological publications that defined the main types and began to establish their distributions. The kilns that produced the pottery began to be found, in some cases through her own documentary research, and she either excavated these — at Winksley and at Brandsby — or produced the reports on the ceramics from them — at Potterton and elsewhere.

‘Collaboration with our late Fellow John Hurst, the national medieval ceramics expert at the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, led to her being invited to carry out a number of excavations on medieval sites in Yorkshire, including Knaresborough Castle, and on four medieval moated sites threatened with destruction. From this came a general survey of medieval moated sites in Yorkshire. The resultant publication is still the starting point for research on the subject. Jean’s collaboration with Hurst continued at the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, where for many years she reported on the ceramic finds from this very long-running and now world-famous excavation. Contacts made through these projects and through her husband’s wide international network meant that Jean was well known and internationally-respected in her field. For many years, for example, she was one of the British delegates on the Château Gaillard Conference on Castle Studies.

‘Jean is remembered as an inspiring teacher by the students of her Extra-Mural and WEA classes, many of whom first encountered archaeology through her and went on, with her encouragement and guidance, to make their own contributions, as amateurs and, in some cases, as professionals. Another seminal publication, work on the history of Yorkshire boundaries, emerged from such Extra-Mural work.

‘She was a moving spirit behind the establishment of a Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, of which she was the first Chairman. Always a cairn terrier enthusiast, she gained much enjoyment in later years from the study and archaeological history of early dog collars, on which she was also the acknowledged expert. Within the University she was a strong advocate of archaeology, working with her medievalist husband to see the establishment of posts in both the Department of History and of Extra Mural Studies, and being extremely saddened when these were relinquished.’