Paul Ashbee

Paul Ashbee (23 June 1918 – 19 August 2009) was a leading British archaeologist, noted for his many excavations of barrows, or burial mounds, and for co-directing the Sutton Hoo digs (with Rupert Bruce-Mitford) from 1964 to 1972. He was also president of the Just William Society. He died of cancer on 19 August 2009, aged 91.

Personal life The only child of cabinet maker Lewis Ashbee and Hannah Mary Elisabeth, daughter of house decorator William Edward Birch Brett, of Thanet, Kent, Paul Ashbee was born in Bearsted, near Maidstone, Kent. He made national headlines when he uncovered the remains of a Roman villa on a farm at Thurnham when still a teenager. she was a history student and they met at a dig at Verulamium, St Albans in 1949. She died in 2005, From 1976 to 1980 he was the President of the Cornwall Archaeology Society, and was also a commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England for 10 years.

Excavations 1949–50 — cemetery at Porthcressa, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly 1950–52 — assistant to Rupert Bruce-Mitford on the early medieval settlement at Mawgan Porth 1955 — barrow at Tregulland, north-east of Bodmin Moor 1960 — barrow at Wilsford, Normanton Down, Wiltshire 1964–71 — co-director with Rupert Bruce-Mitford at Sutton Hoo 1970–? — replacement of the capstones of the entrance grave at Bant's Carn and the multi-period settlement at Halangy, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly

Selected works

1960 The Bronze Age Round Barrow in Britain, Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1970 The Earthen Long Barrow in Britain, University of Toronto Press, 1974 Ancient Scilly, David & Charles, 1978 The Ancient British, Geo Abstracts, 1996 Halangy Down, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, Excavations 1964–1977, Cornish Archaeology No 35 2005 Kent in Prehistoric Times, The History Press,