Cyril Fox | |
|---|---|
 Fox in 1946 | |
| Born | (1882-12-16)16 December 1882 Chippenham,Wiltshire, England |
| Died | 15 January 1967(1967-01-15) (aged 84) Exeter, Devon, England |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | 2 daughters, 3 sons |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Archaeology, museum director |
| Institutions | National Museum of Wales |
Sir Cyril Fred FoxFSA FBA MRIA (16 December 1882[1] – 15 January 1967) was an Englisharchaeologist and museum director.
Fox became keeper of archaeology at theNational Museum of Wales, and subsequently served as director from 1926 to 1948. Many of his most notable achievements were collaborative. With his second wife,Aileen Fox, he surveyed and excavated several prehistoric monuments inWales.[2] WithIorwerth Peate, he established theWelsh Folk Museum atSt Fagans, and withLord Raglan, he authored a definitive history ofvernacular architecture,Monmouthshire Houses.
Sir Cyril Fred Fox was born inChippenham,Wiltshire. He was educated atChrist's Hospital school.[3] His first job, at the age of 16, was as a gardener. He served as a clerk in a government commission ontuberculosis and then as director of a small research station in Cambridge. He moved to work part-time for the university's museum of archaeology and anthropology, and in 1919 was admitted toMagdalene College, Cambridge, as a part-time student of archaeology, at first reading for the newly-founded Englishtripos. Spotted by ProfessorH. M. Chadwick, he was soon allowed to proceed straight to doctoral study, and in 1922 he completed a Ph.D thesis entitledArchaeology of the Cambridge Region.[4] This work was published under the same title in 1923, and met with immediate success, with his election to aFellow of the Society of Antiquaries in the same year.
In 1922 Fox was appointed curator of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales by his close friendMortimer Wheeler and in 1926 succeeded Wheeler as its director. He was additionally president of theSociety of Antiquaries of London from 1944 to 1949, and concurrently the president of theCouncil of British Archaeology.[5]
He produced a large number of publications. They includeThe Personality of Britain (1932), drawing attention to the differences between upland and lowland Britain;Offa's Dyke (1955), a seminal study of that great earthwork, and studies onCeltic Art, on the major discovery of early ironwork atLlyn Cerrig Bach inAnglesey; andMonmouthshire Houses, co-authored withLord Raglan.
For his administrative and scholarly work he gained a wide range of honours, including aknighthood (1935) and Fellowship of theBritish Academy (1940). Together with his colleague Nash-Williams at the Museum of Wales, he collaborated with the artistAlan Sorrell on reconstruction drawings of the Roman excavations at Caerwent which were published in theIllustrated London News 1937–1942. Among other achievements, he worked with his colleagueIorwerth Peate on the development of what became in 1946, under Peate's curatorship, the Welsh Folk Museum atSt Fagans, near Cardiff (now theSt Fagans National History Museum).[4]
In 1916, Fox married his first wife, Olive Congreve-Pridgeon, with whom he had two daughters.[5] Olive died in a swimming accident in 1932.[4] The year after her death Fox marriedAileen Scott-Henderson, a fellow archaeologist. They had three sons.[6] The family lived at Four Elms, a house inRhiwbina Garden Village, in the north of Cardiff from 1928 until Fox’s retirement in 1948.[7] They then moved toExeter,Devon, following Aileen’s appointment to a post at theUniversity of Exeter. Fox died in 1967.[8]
