Rowland Gordon Hughes

`Roy’ Hughes was born on 5 April 1917 in Penmaenmawr, North Wales. He lived in the shadow of Graig-lwyd, spoke Welsh as his first language, and often walked on the hill with his father looking for artefacts in the Neolithic stone axe factory. After leaving school Hughes worked briefly in London until war broke out, when he joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and saw action at Dunkirk and on the Normandy beach-head. After demobilisation he studied history at Coleg Harlech and the University College of North Wales at Bangor and was employed by the (then) Ministry of Works as an archaeologist, excavating at Caerleon and Thetford. In 1950 Hughes was appointed assistant curator at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, where he was to remain until he retired as deputy director and keeper of antiquities in 1982. He specialized in the prehistory of Derbyshire and regularly participated in excavations, including the Romano-British kilns at Shottle and Hazelwood; the Derby Racecourse Roman site; St Alkmund’s Church Saxon/Medieval site; Barton Blount deserted village; the old Derby china works and Derby Bridge chapel. Hughes was honorary secretary of the Derbyshire Archaeological Society in the 1960s and contributed to the Journal. His last two short notes appeared posthumously in the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, volume 119 (1999). In `Some Unrecorded Prehistoric Tools from Derbyshire Hughes collected together notes and drawings of tools now lost or dispersed, and in `Two Medieval Tiles found at Barton Fields Farm, Barton Blount’ he illustrated two unglazed terracotta floor tiles rescued from piles of debris in a farmer’s field. Hughes played a key role in establishing Derby’s Industrial Museum at the old Silk Mill, off Full Street, and enjoyed giving guided tours, especially to school children, of the galleries in his care. He wrote a number of booklets for the museum on topics ranging from bottles to clocks and, in weightier vein, he collaborated with Adrian Oswald and R J C Hildyard to produce English Brown Stoneware, 1670-1900, published by Faber in 1982 in their Monographs on Pottery and Porcelain series. His last publication, at the age of eighty, was Derbyshire Clocks and Clockmakers (1998), written jointly with Derby local historian, Maxwell Craven. He died on 8 January 1999.