John Rhodes

Many Fellows were among the mourners from the museums, archaeology and conservation world who packed St Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford, on 30 August for the funeral of our Fellow John Graham Rhodes, who died suddenly on 13 August 2011.

Our Fellow the Revd Martin Henig conducted the funeral (his first) and delivered a short address in which he said that ‘John’s achievements in the public sphere were formidable, arising from a lively interest in the past and engagement with its physical remains. He was fascinated by the history of collecting and collectors from the time of John Bargrave, a seventeenth-century Canon of Canterbury, onwards and he ensured that the museums he helped to organise were not only enthralling displays to visit, but models of education and scholarship.

‘They included not only the Oxfordshire Museum at Woodstock and Banbury Museum but Cogges near Witney. Here, assisted by his friend [Fellow] John Steane, he was instrumental in turning a run-down farm into an amazing display of rural life which has continued to enchant visitors ever since. At Reading Museum John redisplayed the large collection of Roman artefacts from Silchester in a manner that makes it still the finest local museum in which to understand life in Roman Britain.

‘The list of John’s highly successful conservation projects on buildings is truly prodigious and includes Oxford Castle, Shaw House and Chichester Cathedral and (with Oxford Archaeology, where he was working until the very day of his death) Audley End, Orford Castle, Framlingham, Gainsborough Hall, Tattershall Castle, Knowle, Deal Castle and Osborne House. It reads like a role of honour: all English history is there and the work he did will live on to help subsequent generations to understand the past.’

Our Fellow George Speake has contributed the following summary of John Rhodes’s career. ‘John studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1963 to 1966. After a short spell as a schoolmaster in Yarm, Yorkshire, he returned to Oxford where he studied under Professor Christopher Hawkes (1968—9), gaining a starred Diploma in European Archaeology. The opportunity for further postgraduate study was side-tracked when he was appointed as a Museum Assistant to Bernard Fagg, at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. The three years he spent here undoubtedly laid the foundations for John’s many professional talents and skills, both curatorial and as a designer of exhibitions and museum displays.

‘In 1972 he was appointed Keeper of Antiquities with Oxfordshire Museum Services. Initially at the splendid museum in Woodstock and then elsewhere, at Banbury, Wantage and Abingdon, John oversaw the innovative and groundbreaking re-display of the county’s antiquities and history. In 1988, John was appointed Director of Reading Museum and Art Gallery, a post he filled with distinction until his premature retirement in 1994. From 1994 he worked as a consultant specialising in museum development schemes, exhibition planning, historic building studies and conservation planning. On the afternoon prior to his death he had just completed a report for English Heritage on Osborne House, Isle of Wight, co-authored with our Fellow Julian Munby. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him, his many friends and museum colleagues.’