(Past President 1989–94; Hon. Vice-President from 1994; Hon. Editor YAJ 1974–1999)
Ronald Butler was the Society’s fourteenth president, serving from 1989–94 and then became honorary vice-president from 1994. He assiduously chaired the meetings of its council seeking to produce a consensus, however privately exasperated he felt about some discussions. He also attended the meetings of groups and sections, though the Roman Antiquities and the Record Series had his most constant support. He provided an even greater contribution to the Society by acting as its editor for 26 years. First invited to take this post by the then president Eric Gee, Ronald served from 1974 to 1999. His broad archaeological, historical and architectural knowledge enabled him to handle the wide range of contributions to the journal, sometimes acting as midwife to amateur writers by patiently converting their typescripts into a publishable state, at other times having the clarity of mind to prune excessive verbiage. He had hoped to exceed the years of service given by Hardy Bertram McCall (editor 1906–32), but instead retired when he felt the increased computerisation of contributions and correspondence had moved editorial work into a different world. Over those years he maintained the high standard of the annual journal and ensured that it was the major historical and archaeological publication in Yorkshire. Ronald also served the Society by conscientiously acting for many years as its representative on the York Archaeological Trust and on the Malton Museum Trust. On both trusts he could well have been appointed on the merits of his own research interests.
Ronald was born near Nottingham and, as a foundation scholar, attended Nottingham High School eventually specialising in classics. He then proceeded via an open scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he had a distinguished career, gaining a first in each of his undergraduate years, taking three different but related disciplines of classics, classical archaeology, and archaeology and anthropology. In one vacation he and a group of four other college friends took an old US Army staff car across the Alps and communist Yugoslavia to reach the temples and fortifications of ancient Greece. Though not a natural sportsman he did cox one of the college’s eights, winning a rudder in the May Races when his boat recorded five bumps.
He then proceeded to a doctor’s degree, writing his thesis on ‘Late Roman Defences of Britain and Gaul’. This latter research involved visiting all the forts of the Saxon Shore, but also we, with another college friend, cycled over 2000 miles in France, Germany and Belgium inspecting historic monuments and museums. Simultaneously with his research he participated in excavation with Grahame Clarke at Star Carr near Scarborough, with Eric Birley at Corbridge and with Richard Atkinson at Dorchester, as well as at local sites in and around Nottingham, though by preference Ronald was a fieldworker rather than a digger. He also supported his county’s archaeological Thoroton Society, providing articles on Nottingham’s common (open) fields and on its Civil War defences. With his doctoral research completed, he spent his two years of National Service in the RAF, mostly based at Bawdsey radar station on the Suffolk coast.
In 1956 Ronald had to choose between an academic career at Glasgow or a research post with the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments. He chose the second option, becoming an investigator for this erudite branch of the civil service. It was with that organisation that he spent all the thirty-three years of his career. He was initially based at their London office, but was often on secondment helping on field surveys and building recording in Dorset and Cambridgeshire. He was largely responsible for a pioneer survey of archaeological sites on the Midland river gravels: A Matter of Time (1960).
When he moved to the York office in 1966, Ronald joined a congenial group of colleagues, all outstanding archaeologists and building historians, and immersed himself in field survey, historical research and editorial work. As was usual at that time most of his work is hidden away anonymously in the files of the Commission, except for the volume on The Defences of York (1972). He contributed to two of the inventory volumes on the city of York and to all three York Minster surveys. He was a major collaborator on Houses of the North York Moors (1987) and, with Herman Ramm, on the aerial photographic survey of prehistoric earthworks in East Yorkshire (C. Stoertz 1997). Ronald was one of a learned quartet in the Royal Commission’s York office (Eric Gee, Herman Ramm, Tom French) who gave their professional talents to Yorkshire’s past and their leisure time to this Society. Without their contribution the YAS would be much the poorer.
Living in York Ronald also supported both the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and the Yorkshire Architectural and York Archaeological Society (YAYAS), particularly the latter, of which he was vice-president and for whom he wrote two guide-books The City Walls and Bars of York (1974) and Medieval York (1984). He also contributed a number of articles to The York Historian on historic buildings, maps and views. Another significant contribution to York’s archaeology was as secretary to the York Minster Archaeological Advisory Committee for twenty years, serving under a succession of distinguished chairmen and becoming, in Martin Biddle’s phrase, the ‘institutional memory’ of one of the most challenging and complicated archaeological projects ever carried out in Britain. Ronald assisted in all the subsequent publications aided by his extensive and accurate recall, his infinite capacity for understanding detail and his quiet calm in frequent crises. He also edited the papers from a Nottingham University conference: Soldier and Civilian in Roman Yorkshire (1971).
At all these societies he was a keen participant in their discussions at lectures and had an almost limitless fund of anecdotes and obscure information. His colleagues too appreciated his dry sense of humour and seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of historical and antiquarian matters. Members of the York Archaeological Trust particularly valued him as an acute and helpful adviser, a generous critic and a source of useful ideas. He relished his social contacts at archaeological meetings, dinners and receptions right up until the end of last year.
At home in York Ronald and Marie brought up their son Paul in their Roman Catholic faith. After celebrating fifty years of marriage, Marie’s death at Easter 2010 following a long illness caused him great sadness, but he continued to fill his leisure time by reading `medieval’ detective stories and watching historical films, in both cases eager to identify anachronisms.
With his sudden death on 12 January 2012 the Society has lost one of its most faithful supporters and the county has lost a dedicated and perceptive scholar.
Ron Butler
Lawrence Butler
Cambridge