Ralph Bernard Pugh was an historian and editor of the Victoria History of the Counties of England from 1949 to 1977.
16 Facts About Ralph Pugh
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Ralph Pugh was a professor of English history at the University of London, a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a teacher of palaeography, and an expert on medieval penology.
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Ralph Pugh was educated at Homefield, a preparatory school, then from 1924 to 1929 at St Paul's School, London, and finally at The Queen's College, Oxford, where he read modern history and graduated BA in 1932 with a First.
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Ralph Pugh began a doctoral thesis on early nineteenth-century European historiography, but did not complete it.
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In 1934 Ralph Pugh was appointed an assistant keeper at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, where he worked on calendars of archives.
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In 1946 he returned to the PRO, but had already been approached by the corporation of Swindon in Wiltshire, which wished to support local history, and Ralph Pugh helped to establish a new partnership to create the Wiltshire Victoria County History, funded by Wiltshire local authorities, with a view to producing the Wiltshire volumes of the Victoria County History, none of which had yet appeared.
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Ralph Pugh improved the finances of the project, and its general articles were expanded, using those of Wiltshire as a model.
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Ralph Pugh gave such active guidance to the project's historians, that his control was seen as paternalistic by some of them.
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Ralph Pugh wrote many reviews, became a supernumerary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, taught palaeography, and from 1953 was chairman of the Wiltshire records branch, then from 1967 its president, when it became the Wiltshire Record Society.
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Ralph Pugh was succeeded at the VCH by Christopher Elrington, and on his retirement was appointed an emeritus professor of London University.
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In 1973 Ralph Pugh was a Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library of Washington, DC.
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Ralph Pugh never married and did not learn to drive a car.
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Ralph Pugh was a High Anglican, and despite his stoop was very tall.
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Ralph Pugh's manners were very formal, and he was an enthusiast for precision.
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Ralph Pugh was Vice-President of the Selden Society from 1966 to 1969 and a member of the Council of the National Trust from 1967 to 1975.
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Ralph Pugh's health was troubled by worsening spinal curvature and by pipe-smoking.