Dr Frederick Wainwright Pioneer of rescue archaeology
Ian Ralston charts the many achievements of Dr Frederick Wainwright, an archaeological pioneer in post-war Scotland
In the decade following his appointment to University College, Dundee just after World War II, Dr Frederick Wainwright made a number of important contributions to the development of archaeology – including to what is now known as ‘rescue archaeology’ – within Scotland. They ranged from significant publications to the organisation of important conferences to fieldwork, the last more particularly in the agricultural lowlands of Angus. Although Wainwright continued to undertake significant work on his translation in 1956 to St Andrews (a consequence of the re-shaping of the organisational links and ‘subject mixes’ between the two then-conjoined institutions) as lecturer in AngloSaxon Studies and – at the time of his early death from an aneurysm of the brain in Edinburgh at the age of 43 in 1961 – senior lecturer in Dark Age studies, the innovations of his Dundee years stand out as key elements in the post-war expansion of archaeology in and on Scotland, and merit being better known.
Early years
Born in 1917 in Merseyside and educated at Prescot Grammar School,Wainwright went to Reading University.There, he studied history with Professor (later Sir) Frank Stenton, the celebrated Anglo-Saxonist, eventually specialising in that period and mastering cognate subjects including place-name studies and field archaeology. Graduating with a First in history in 1938, he then qualified as a teacher, married a fellow-pupil of Stenton’s, and embarked on a career as a schoolmaster in Liverpool.There, he also undertook doctoral research on ‘Edward the Elder and the Danes’ for Reading’s department of history. His PhD was awarded in 1944. Over these years, he began publishing on place names in northern England while also excavating, initially with Professor W.J. Varley of Liverpool University, on real and potential Anglo-Saxon burhs such as at the Iron Age hillfort of Eddisbury in Cheshire.
In 1945,Wainwright was appointed to a lectureship in history at University College in Dundee; and from 1951 he was head of the small department there.While his main teaching responsibilities lay latterly in modern and constitutional history, he began to extend his AngloSaxon interests to the local early medieval people – the Picts. His achievements in Scotland in this regard, alone and with others – and with the help of his students – were very much focused on increasing understanding
of the Picts and their predecessors, as much beyond as on campus. In communicating discoveries to the wider public, as in other matters, he personified many of the changes that were happening in Scottish archaeology, notably outwith the ‘state archaeology’ of the official bodies during the post-war years.
Unsurprisingly, his earliest actions seem to have been local. In collaboration with University College principal Gordon Wimberley, formerly the commanding officer of the 51st Highland Division in its campaigns from Egypt to Sicily (1941-43), who arrived in Dundee in 1946, he founded the Abertay Historical Society in May 1947.This had the purpose of encouraging local history and associated studies in Dundee, Angus, Perthshire and Fife. Within months, the new society had held a meeting with representatives of its long-established neighbour, the Perthshire Society of Natural Science. The dynamism of the Abertay group seems to have encouraged its Perthshire counterpart to establish an archaeological section, convened by Dr Margaret Stewart (in the 1930s Professor Vere Gordon Childe’s only doctoral student in Scotland). Both societies began to undertake archaeological reconnaissance including checking the condition of scheduled ancient monuments in their areas of interest. The Abertay Society shortly thereafter joined the fledgling Council for British Archaeology Scottish Regional Group (SRG) which had been set up in 1944 as the ‘umbrella grouping’ for such societies the length and breadth of Scotland; 75 years on, it is still active.
Wainwright was himself beginning to research early medieval aspects of the local landscape. His first paper derived from these investigations in Angus, in 1948, concerned the site of the key battle of Nechtanesmere which saw the Anglian advance north of Forth checked by the Picts in CE 685. Published in the journal Antiquity,Wainwright’s efforts to pin down the site of the battle to an area west of Letham in Angus exhibits his interdisciplinary (the word itself is a new coining of the 1930s) approach in classic form.This involved: a detailed consideration of the surviving, nearcontemporary historical documentation; rehearsal of the place name evidence; an investigation of the local topography, more particularly to identify and map the former water body of Lin Garan or Nechtanesmere mentioned in the historical sources at the largelydrained Dunnichen Moss; and speculation on the likely site of Nechtan’s fort, which he considered to lie at the much-altered Castle Hill, Dunnichen. The field survey involved Wainwright’s history students from Dundee, including David B. Taylor who was later to become an important amateur field archaeologist in Tayside.
Archaeology summer schools
Before examining Wainwright’s contributions to field archaeology in a little more detail, another dimension of his key role in taking new archaeological research and discoveries to wider audiences should be considered. From the early 1950s, the new CBA Scottish Regional Group decided that it should embark on a series of annual summer schools – essentially extended archaeological conferences aimed at both specialists and interested amateurs.These highlighted both new discoveries and fresh overviews of particular topics, and were accompanied by visits to key sites in the conference area.
The August 1952 meeting was the first major residential archaeological conference to be held in Scotland after WWII
In 1951 Wainwright was invited by a committee of the SRG to design and be the honorary director of the first of these, to be held in 1952. He continued in that role until his death, with his wife Barbara undertaking much of the associated administration from their home in Newport-on-Tay. The August 1952 meeting was the first major residential archaeological conference to be held in Scotland after World War II, with over 100 attendees, and three excursions, each with 80 participants. Its topic was ‘The Problem of the Picts’ and it took place in University College Dundee. Leading scholars of the day (including Wainwright himself) contributed papers notably on the art, language and archaeological record of the Picts; these were in due course published by Thomas Nelson of Edinburgh in 1955 in a series called ‘Studies in History and Archaeology’, again edited by Wainwright. The