One of the North East’s most distinguished archaeologists and historians has died after a lifetime of achievement.
The internationally-recognised Dame Rosemary Cramp, who in 1971 became the first female professor at Durham University, was 93.
Born into a farming family, Dame Rosemary joined Durham University in 1955, and was instrumental in the founding of the Department of Archaeology the following year with Hadrian’s Wall scholar Eric Birley, whose grandson Dr Andrew Birley, is now chief executive officer of the Vindolanda Trust and director of excavations at the Northumberland fort.
Read more: 50 years of the Vindolanda tablets
She served as head of department in archaeology at Durham University for 19 years and was twice recognised in the honours lists for her services to scholarship, being appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1987 and then Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011. An expert in Anglo-Saxon history, she led major excavations at the twin monastery sites of Wearmouth and Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede spent his life.
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Founded by Benedict Biscop in the late 7th century, the monastery achieved an international reputation but there was almost no archaeological knowledge of the site until the excavations undertaken by Prof Cramp between 1959 and 1988. The evidence revealed the economic basis and international contacts maintained by the monastery, including exotic pottery and the greatest quantity of 7th to 8th-century coloured window glass from any site of comparable date in Europe.
The Jarrow digs produced hundreds of fragments of the rare Anglo-Saxon glass, some of which were used to create a window at St Paul’s Church in Jarrow.
Dame Rosemary was a member of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, the British Museum, Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission England - latterly Historic England - the Archaeological Data Service and the Council for British Archaeology. She served as President of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2001-2004 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. She also led a project which over more than 40 years has catalogued and visually recorded every fragment of early medieval stone sculpture across England.
The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, supported by more than 30 researchers since 1977, coordinated the production of a series of bound, detailed and fully illustrated volumes that provide coverage of every piece of early medieval sculpture and sculpture. The first volume was devoted to Northumberland and County Durham.
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