Page 9 - John Barber's Oakham Castle and its archaeology

Introduction and Obituary

In October 1994, nearly three years before his death, John Barber made available his manuscript memoir to
read and copy. The main body was on Oakham Castle and contained his personal reminiscences spanning
nearly seventy years. These included hitherto unpublished notes on his excavation on the Castle kitchens in
1956 and 1957, which, with the exception of short articles in The Oakhamian (Barber 1955-1958) and
Medieval Archaeology (Wilson & Hurst 1957, 1958 & 1959) – all transcribed in Appendix D below, have
remained unrecorded until now, although the finds and excavation archive were deposited in the Rutland
County Museum. Consequently the Rutland Local History & Record Society has felt that the publication of
these memoirs would be a fitting tribute to his memory, best published as they stand since they reflect his
own personality, this despite advances in our knowledge since then. To this memoir the editors have added
illustrations and footnotes, as well as a description of the pottery from the excavation, completed in 1999 and
updated in 2011 by Deborah Sawday, a freelance specialist in post-Roman pottery found in the East
Midlands area.
John Barber would have been fascinated and delighted by recent research on the Castle, including the
Time Team investigations of 2012 (Good & Mepham 2013), various detailed surveys of the site (eg Shepherd
& Walker 2011), and Nick Hill’s recent perceptive analysis of the Great Hall incorporating the results of
tree-ring dating of its timbers (Hill 2013; Arnold & Howard 2013); he would also have been a keen supporter
of Rutland County Council’s bid for an award from the Heritage Lottery Fund for work on Oakham Castle.
Many scholars have expressed their views about the original form of the Great Hall and its possible
ancillary buildings, often disagreeing one with another. John Barber was not afraid to take issue with them
where he did not agree, but at the same time he would have respected their reasoned arguments. In the same
way we may think that his interpretation of the building and of the traces of the lost buildings revealed by his
excavations was not necessarily always correct, but we readily acknowledge that what he wrote still has a
bearing on current thought.

Fig. 4. John Barber presenting a copy of his book The Story of Oakham School to
HM Queen Elizabeth II during the school’s Quatercentenary celebrations in 1984
(Oakham School Archives).
John Lewis Barber, MA, FSA (1914-1997), often known as Jack, was a household name in Rutland in all
matters to do with the history and archaeology of the county and with its museum, and much more besides.
His death in February 1997 left both the Rutland Local History & Record Society and the Friends of the
Rutland County Museum much the poorer, as was noted in an obituary in Rutland Record 18 (1998), 326.

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