Arthur Clarke

‘Nobby’ Clarke was born in Bembridge, Isle of Wight, on 6 August 1921 and attended the Royal Masonic School. He worked briefly for an insurance company in the City and on the outbreak of war joined the Brigade of Guards, with which he later served in Germany. Demobilised in 1946 he began a new career with the Archaeology Branch of the Ordnance Survey, where he was trained in field survey and draughtsmanship, working under C. W. Phillips, FSA, who had succeeded W. F. Grimes as Archaeology Officer. Clark loved field work and travelled extensively up and down the country, never staying long in any one place and operating from a caravan during his early career. Over the years he discovered a number of archaeological sites, including the Roman road from Chichester to Silchester, but finally settled for a more sedentary job with the Ordnance Survey, first in the Edinburgh office in 1965 and then as superintendent at Maybush in 1972. After retirement in 1981 Clarke stayed on in Southampton and, attracted by the archaeological possibilities of the New Forest, took up field work again, concentrating on the alignment of Roman roads. The first task he set himself was to identify the medieval boundary marks of the New Forest and, having accomplished this, he went on to investigate those boundary marks described by medieval chroniclers as "the king’s road" or "the great road", often a Roman road. The first to receive his attention was the Roman road to Lepe, shown on Isaac Taylor’s map of 1759 but discarded from the OS Map of Roman Britain. Clarke re-established its authenticity and identified "the great road" which branched from the Lepe road at Applemore, tracing it across the Forest almost to the outskirts of Salisbury. Still at Lepe, he discovered a previously unknown section of the road, northwards from Applemore to Tatchbury, where it joins a known Roman road. Clarke re-identified remains of Roman roads, known only from historical accounts of Vespasian’s campaign, one in the vicinity of Stoney Cross, largely destroyed by the construction of a wartime airfield, and one from Cadnam, through Stoney Cross on to the river Avon, much of it destroyed by the A31 motorway. The newly discovered roads encompass most of the hillforts in the Forest; there are two roads leading to the Isle of Wight and the western road leads to the mid-first century military site at Lake Farm. Clarke did not publish his findings but his computer files, papers and maps are deposited in the New Forest Museum at Lyndhurst, including reappraisals of the alignments of the Fosse Way, Ermine Street, and Stane Street as well as the New Forest roads. It is hoped that these will be published in due course. Clarke died on 23 March 2000.