63 Facts About Rupert Bruce-Mitford

Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-Mitford was a British archaeologist and scholar.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford spent the majority of his career at the British Museum, primarily as the Keeper of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities, and was particularly known for his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.

When Rupert Bruce-Mitford was five, his father, who had returned to Japan two years earlier, died.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford's mother was left to raise the four sons, of which Bruce-Mitford was the youngest, on a tiny salary; the stresses were substantial, and Bruce-Mitford was fostered for a time after his mother had a breakdown.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford attended preparatory school with the support of a relative, was admitted to the charity school Christ's Hospital five years later, and, in 1933, was awarded a Baring Scholarship in History to attend Hertford College, Oxford.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford founded the Society for Medieval Archaeology, and served as secretary, and later vice-president, of the Society of Antiquaries.

Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-Mitford was born on 14 June 1914 at 1 Deerhurst Road, Streatham, London.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford died shortly after arrival; his wife returned to India, but died there four years later.

Eustace Beer, Rupert Bruce-Mitford later wrote, was "himself twice orphaned while still a small boy".

Rupert Bruce-Mitford left less than nine months later departing to Japan.

Eustace Rupert Bruce-Mitford had met Beatrice Allison on his ship to Yokohama, and soon after founding his school recruited her as an assistant teacher; they married on 27 July 1904, at Christ Church, Yokohama.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was the eldest daughter of early settlers of British Columbia, Susan Louisa and John Fall Allison, an explorer, gold prospector, and cattle rancher.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was taken on as an assistant editor by Captain Francis Brinkley, owner and editor of the Japan Mail, though by 1911 had returned to England as a freelance journalist.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was born three years after his family returned from Japan.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was frequently sick as a child, coming down with scarlet fever and diphtheria when aged two, and influenza when around six.

The stresses on the family were substantial, and at one point Beatrice Bruce-Mitford had a breakdown, causing Rupert to be fostered for a time.

Orphaned and poor, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was educated with the financial support of his mother's cousin.

Around 1920, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was thereby sent to Brightlands preparatory school in Dulwich, London, which his brothers Terence and Alec attended, receiving scholarships to Dulwich College.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was baptised around the same time, perhaps to improve his later chances of admittance to the charity school Christ's Hospital.

Five years later the Brightlands headmaster nominated Rupert Bruce-Mitford to take an examination for Christ's Hospital.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was introduced to archaeology; in 1930 he participated in a dig with S E Winbolt at the Jacobean ironworks in Dedisham, Sussex.

Meanwhile, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was active in school events, including playing rugby and cricket, acting in John Galsworthy's The Little Man, debating at the Horsham Workers' Educational Association, and writing his first article, on a ten-day signals camp held over the 1931 summer holiday.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford walked around the building, listening to guest lecturers speak on the objects, and particularly enjoying hearing about the Chinese paintings and the Royal Gold Cup.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford's supervisor was Robin Flower, deputy keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was tasked with watching the site during the excavation.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford waited "impotently", he later recalled, for the jaws of the mechanical diggers to pick up the mud and transfer it to a lorry; he then jumped aboard, and picked out the artefacts as the lorry made its way "to some gravel hungry site at Cumnor".

Rupert Bruce-Mitford's work influenced him, decades later, to create a national reference collection of medieval pottery at the British Museum.

In December 1937, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was named assistant keeper of the then Department of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was possibly helped in this position by his professor from two years previously, Robin Flower, the deputy keeper of Manuscripts.

In 1939 Rupert Bruce-Mitford was tasked with leading an excavation, this time at the medieval village of Seacourt in Oxfordshire.

From 1940 to 1946, Rupert Bruce-Mitford served in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 1 February 1941, a first lieutenant on 1 August 1942, an acting captain on 20 November 1942, and a temporary captain on 26 February 1943.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford spent the war awaiting his return to the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford returned to a museum that had suffered during the war.

Early in 1946, Kendrick and Rupert Bruce-Mitford placed restored artefacts from Sutton Hoo on display in the museum's King Edward VII Gallery.

In January 1947, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the museum published The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: A Provisional Guide, which Rupert Bruce-Mitford had written and produced during evenings at his kitchen table.

Also in 1947, Rupert Bruce-Mitford visited Sweden for six weeks at the invitation of the archaeologist Sune Lindqvist.

The visit, Rupert Bruce-Mitford later wrote, "turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life".

Rupert Bruce-Mitford studied the similar finds from Vendel and Valsgarde and helped Lindqvist excavate the boat-grave from Valsgarde 11, learning Swedish along the way.

From 1949 to 1952, as well as in 1954 and 1974, Rupert Bruce-Mitford excavated at the Mawgan Porth Dark Age Village in Cornwall.

In 1955, Rupert Bruce-Mitford joined Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark and Harold Plenderleith to search Lincoln Cathedral for the burial place of Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and in 1957, he helped found the Society for Medieval Archaeology, becoming its first president.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford began developing an interest in, and began compiling information on, Celtic hanging bowls.

In 1960, Rupert Bruce-Mitford opened an exhibition, "Archaeology from the Air", at the Victoria Galleries in Kingston upon Hull.

The collection was purchased for the museum, and Rupert Bruce-Mitford was made a liveryman of the company.

Meanwhile, in 1960, Rupert Bruce-Mitford embarked on an ultimately unsuccessful two-year attempt to acquire what would become known as the Cloisters Cross.

Frank Francis took over as director from a retiring Kendrick in 1959, and the following year made two floors of a Montague Street house available for Rupert Bruce-Mitford to devote to Sutton Hoo.

From 1965 to 1970, Rupert Bruce-Mitford led another round of excavations at Sutton Hoo.

In 1968, Rupert Bruce-Mitford updated the Provisional Guide with a new edition, now entitled The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: A Handbook; second and third editions of the Handbook followed in 1972 and 1979.

The book contained twelve updated and rewritten chapters that had appeared elsewhere, along with four new chapters; originally conceived as a reference work which the forthcoming Sutton Hoo publication would cite throughout, it, Rupert Bruce-Mitford wrote, provided "shorter and more readily accessible accounts" of certain portions of the burial.

Also in 1975, Rupert Bruce-Mitford relinquished his role as Keeper of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities to spend two years as Research Keeper.

Martin Carver, to whom Rupert Bruce-Mitford "handed the Sutton Hoo baton" after publication of the work, called the publication "the most compendious ever produced for a British archaeological site".

Rupert Bruce-Mitford left the British Museum after his Research Keepership ended in 1977.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford finished his work on the excavations at Mawgan Porth; the book was published posthumously in 1997.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford resumed work on the opus A Corpus of Late Celtic Hanging-Bowls, on which he had begun work in the 1940s, and which was finished by Shiela Raven and published in 2005.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was married three times, and had three children by his first wife.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was the longtime partner of Nigel Williams, who from 1970 to 1971 reconstructed the Sutton Hoo helmet.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford married his former research assistant Marilyn Roberta Luscombe on 11 July 1975, after announcing the engagement in March.

The marriage was dissolved in 1984, at which point Rupert Bruce-Mitford found it necessary to sell his library, which went to Okinawa Christian Junior College in Japan.

In 1987, Rupert Bruce-Mitford visited British Columbia, where his mother's family was from.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford met cousins living on a reservation there and, Biddle wrote, was "deeply moved" by The Lake, an opera about early life in the Okanagan Valley.

Biddle noted that Rupert Bruce-Mitford "was fascinated by his family's background" in both British Columbia and Japan.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was buried eight days later in the burial ground by St Mary's Church in Bampton, Oxfordshire.

Rupert Bruce-Mitford was a member of Marylebone Cricket Club, and a member or regular at the Athenaeum and the Garrick.