Arthur Charles Harrison, B.A.

Arthur Harrison was born on 12 September 1912 and educated at Marlborough. He took a first in classics at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1932, followed by a second-class in Litterae Humaniores in 1934. Harrison spent his working life teaching classics in several schools, apart from five years in the army from 1940-5 during which time he was a member of Mountbatten’s staff in Ceylon. His final teaching post was senior classics master at Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School in Rochester and it was in Kent that he made his mark in archaeology. Harrison joined the Kent Archaeological Society in 1962; became honorary treasurer in 1970; honorary general secretary in 1972 and a vice-president in 1993. As well as acting as the society’s honorary curator he served with distinction on most of its specialist committees, ranging from Churches, through Fieldwork to Membership and Publicity. He was also honorary secretary of C.B.A. Group 11 for some years. Excellent committee man though he was, Harrison was also an enthusiastic fieldworker, assisting at many digs in the county and directing excavations on Roman sites in Rochester after years of participation in work in the city from 1961 onwards. His report on excavations in 1974-5 for the Department of the Environment in the Northgate area appeared in Arch Cantiana , vol. xcvii; Prior’s Gate House, 1976-77, in vol xcv; excavations at Hill Road, Wouldham parish on the summit of the North Downs in 1982, in vol. xcix; and that for a Belgic and Roman site at 50-4 High Street, in vol. cix. Appropriately, Harrison and his wife lived for many years in a cottage on the Pilgrims` Way and he died in April 1998.