Arthur Ernest Bion Owen

Elected a Fellow of the Society on 22 November 1990

We are very grateful to our Fellow Ian Simmons for the following obituary.

Arthur Owen died at home in Thimbleby, Lincolnshire, on 24 August 2008, aged 84. He was the son of a country solicitor and claimed that it was the discovery in his father's office in Alford of some of the records of the Commissioners of Sewers dating back to the seventeenth century that set him on the twin paths of interest in records and the Lincolnshire landscape. He graduated from King's College, Cambridge, in 1947 and thereafter held posts in manuscript administration, passing through the Historical Manuscripts Commission to become Keeper of Manuscripts in the University Library at Cambridge in 1970, where he stayed until retirement. In 1958 he married Dorothy Williamson, who also became a Fellow. She died in 2002 but her work in archive development and publications as a historian of Boston, King’s Lynn and of the medieval Church in Lincolnshire are still the benchmark studies.

While on the staff of the HMC, Arthur wrote a list of the Bethlem Hospital's Lincolnshire estates documents which is still in regular use. His later output falls into two categories. That which derived from his tenure at Cambridge involved the publication of some of the material in the University Collection, as well as the 1986 “Summary Guide to the Accession of Western Manuscripts (other than Medieval) since 1867”, which continues to be a valuable tool for scholars. Further afield can be found a series of papers and chapters on aspects of drainage and landscape formation, and on place-names, in east Lincolnshire. His explanation of the term hafdic, and the date and role of the sea-banks along the coast north of Ingoldmells, opened up entirely new thinking about the age of reclamation along that coast. His 1998 paper on the salt-making activities of the monks of Bury St Edmunds at Wainfleet issued a challenge to map the holdings set out in the medieval rental lists: it remains to be successfully undertaken.

Arthur’s pleasure in this kind of work came through in his accounts of how he was unable to sleep after realising that the obscure Domesday place-name “Tric” was cognate with names like Utrecht and reflected the existence of a ferry port. The subsequent 2003 paper (with Professor R Coates, FSA) in Lincolnshire History and Archaeology was one of his last, though he was, until very recently, much concerned to find out why Skendleby Psalter was thus named and had moved from choirs to the chase as a likely explanation. He also edited several volumes for the Lincoln Record Society, of which The Medieval Lindsey Marsh: Select Documents (LRS 85, 1996) is a treasure-trove of starting points for all kinds of new explorations.

The effects of his war wounds (he lost an eye and the hearing in one ear in Normandy soon after D-Day) had been exacerbated by increasing infirmity in the last couple of years, but he continued to be cheerful and responsive until soon before his death. His funeral in Thimbleby saw a gathering of both the scholarly from afar and of local people like the thatcher who lived opposite. He was cremated at Alford in what was perhaps a symbolic gesture of completeness.