Elsie Margaret Clifford

Elsie Margaret Clifford (1886 – 1976) was a British archaeologist.

Life Elsie Margaret Chambers was born on 4 June 1886 at 54 Regent Street, Gloucester to Frederick William Chambers, a railway engine driver, and his second wife Mary Ann, née Hughes. She was baptised Elsie Margaret Annie Chambers at All Saints, Gloucester on her first birthday .

Elsie's parents had married in 1883 at Bagendon, where her mother was in service, but this appears to be entirely coincidental and of no relevance to Elsie’s subsequent interest in Bagendon as an archaeological site. Her parents were from comparatively humble origins. Her father was the son of an excise officer who began as a stoker on the railways, progressing to become an engine driver, and later somehow earned enough money to become the owner of a small farm called Fairmile in Hucclecote, Gloucester, as well as running a brickyard and the gravel pits at Barnwood. Her mother was the daughter of a furnaceman in the Forest of Dean, and was working as a domestic servant when she married Elsie's father.

Elsie married Harold Brookes Clifford at the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Hucclecote, near Gloucester, in 1909. Her husband was the manager and later chairman of the haulage contractor, motor garage and car sales company F.W. Chambers & Co., Barnwood Garages, that had evolved out of her father's business interests. They lived in Hucclecote with Elsie's parents initially, but moved to Chandler's Farm, Little Witcombe in the late 1920s.

Elsie became interested in archaeology as a result of the discovery of various prehistoric and Roman finds on her father's property, in particular the gravel pits at Barnwood. In the 1920s she was invited by M.C. Burkitt to attend his archaeology lectures at the University of Cambridge for a year. Her first published work did not come until 1930, when she was already in her mid-40s, and, appropriately enough, discussed finds from her family's gravel beds at Barnwood over the preceding 25 years. From this date onwards, however, she published widely and frequently, mostly on archaeology, but also on folklore and local history. Over the next 37 years, she authored over 40 articles in at least 8 different journals, including two that appeared in the BGAS Transactions in 1967, when she was aged 81.

Though prolific, she maintained her status as an amateur archaeologist. Her archaeological work often consisted of re-excavating existing sites, such as the Neolithic barrows at Notgrove (1934 – 6), Nympsfield and Rodmarton, and Roman villas at Hucclecote, Barnwood and Witcombe. She identified a Late Iron Age settlement at Minchindon.

In the 1930s, she discovered Belgic pottery in a gravel quarry near Bagendon. She returned in 1961 to direct a dig at the previously unexcavated Iron Age settlement there. Her most extensive and best known published work is her account of her work at this site, Bagendon: A Belgic Oppidum.

She was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1929, but her first application to become a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, in 1937, was unsuccessful (women having only been admitted since 1920). She was elected at the second attempt in 1944. She also served as President of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club (1936-8),

She received an OBE for services to archaeology in 1968.