UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 3 September 2015 at 5.30 p.m.
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR TADHG O’KEEFFE on 3 September 2015, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on ROSEMARY CRAMP
President, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dame Professor Rosemary Cramp is truly a giant in the field of medieval archaeology. She is acknowledged internationally as the most influential archaeologist in the long history of Anglo-Saxon research. As an educator, she laid the foundations of many distinguished careers. As a professional archaeologist, she served with great distinction on national and international bodies, always promoting the highest standards. As a colleague of many, she is much admired; as a friend to many, she is much loved.
Rosemary’s career started even before she went to university; she was publishing notes in The Journal of Roman Studies while still at school in her native Leicestershire. She studied English language and literature in Oxford, and taught English there for five years before taking up a lectureship in archaeology in Durham in 1955. Her first major paper, ‘Beowulf and Archaeology’, published in the first-ever volume of the journal Medieval Archaeology in 1957, reflected her unique training. Her paper was immediately preceded in that volume by papers by E.T. Leeds, C.A. Ralegh Radford and David Wilson. They were in good company!
There are at least two other firsts of note in her career. She was the first Anglo-Saxon archaeologist to be appointed to a full-time lecturership in any British university. And she became, in 1971, the first woman to be appointed to a professorship in Durham University. Throughout her career she remained committed to increasing the number of women working in archaeology in the university sector.
It was as a specialist in the Christianised Anglo-Saxons that Rosemary built her reputation. Her scholarship in this area has always been marked by an insistence that the study of Insular culture should not be insular in outlook. In the late 1950s she began excavations at the two great Northumbrian monasteries of Wearmouth (or Monkwearmouth) and Jarrow, home in the late 7th/early 8th century to the Venerable Bede, the polymath who wrote, among other things, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Our knowledge of early medieval monastic culture north of the Alps – especially in respect of artistic production and architecture – owes much to Rosemary’s endeavours at a number of northern sites, but at these two sites in particular.
She has also been the chief driving force behind the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, eleven volumes of which have been published since 1984. One of the great compilations of primary data in the history of medieval scholarship, it has inspired comparable projects elsewhere.
Guided by her, the department of Archaeology in Durham grew from a small, regionally-focused, unit to a world-class unit, famously disguised Tardis-like behind a shop front on Saddler Street in the old city. It was a short walk from there to the great Romanesque cathedral, no better place to tell students about Bede and St Cuthbert, and to the cathedral library, where I recall the librarian taking out Durham A II 10, the famous though fragmentary illuminated manuscript, because Rosemary wanted to show her students the decorated colophon to the Gospel of Matthew! It was also a short walk from Saddler Street to Rosemary’s own house, where she dispensed the same generous hospitality to colleagues and students alike.
Talent, if not nurtured at Durham by her, was attracted to Durham by her. And not just talent in medieval archaeology. Prehistoric archaeology, Roman archaeology, Viking archaeology, archaeological science and conservation studies were among the many fields in which Durham became pre-eminent during her watch. The list of people whom she trained or hired is a veritable Who’s Who of British Archaeology.
Beyond Durham, she has served with distinction as president of the Society for Church Archaeology, president of the Society of Antiquaries (London), president of the Council for British Archaeology, president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, and vice-president of the Royal Archaeological Institute, and as a commissioner with the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments for Scotland, a commissioner with Historic Buildings & Monuments, and a trustee of the British Museum.
Beyond Durham also is Ireland. Rosemary acted as the external examiner for the department of Archaeology in the mid-1970s. Irish medievalists of every stripe, not least in this university, hold her in the very highest esteem. All have been enriched by their encounters, intellectual and personal, with her.
Dame Professor Rosemary Cramp is a most worthy recipient of the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa.
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hanc meam filiam, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.