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| Veronica Ann Wilson [CFT #1935] Born: 1944-Oct-30 Died: 2012 |
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| b The Rectory, West Walton, Norfolk d at Home Veronica's father, a naval officer was at sea when she was born at the home of her grandfather, the Rev. T E Wilson, Rector of West Walton, Norfolk and a former headmaster of Ardingly. After a couple of prep-schools she had an unsatisfactory three years at Sherborne before going on to Colchester County High School (attending the boys' grammar school for Greek) where she won herself a place at Bristol University to read Classics. Her professor there was Nicholas Hammond (also on this family tree) who became a fellow of Caius College, Cambridge where her son Hugh later matriculated. She came away from Bristol with an exceptional first class degree and in the summer of 1966 went on her first dig at Barnsley Park Roman Villa. That autumn she went up to St Hugh's College, Oxford to take the Diploma in Classical Archaeology and the following year started research for her D.Phil. on the 'Cesnola Sarcophagi: Studies in Cypriot Iconography and Culture', her doctoral thesis being submitted to the university some 5 years later. Those magnificent sarcophagi, the subject of her research were in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which necessitated her spending time there in 1969 and 1970 between her numerous trips to Cyprus. It was in fact on her first visit to Cyprus that she helped Professor Franz Maier start his study of a remarkable Cypro-Archaic sculpture which had been found as rubble in the Persian siege ramp of 498BC. Through this project Veronica, Franz, Marie-Louise von Wartburg and Vassos Karageorghis, the then Director of the Department of Antiquities, became close life-long friends. In the years 1971-73 Veronica held a Sir James Knott Research Fellowship in the Department of Classics at Newcastle University and in 1974 she was asked by Henry Hurst to take charge of the finds for the British excavations at Carthage in Tunisia which necessitated a good deal of hard administrative work, leavened perhaps by living close to the Presidential Palace. Later that year she started what was to be her job for the next 29 years, at the British Museum where she took charge of the museum's very substantial Cypriot collections and became Dr Donald Harden's assistant. He was the leading specialist in ancient glass and as well as becoming his life-long friend she helped him catalogue the museum's huge collection including the Portland Vase. It was on a return trip to Carthage that she met Tim Tatton-Brown whom she married in January 1979. The marital home was in Canterbury but she continued to work in London opening her special BM exhibition 'Cyprus BC. 7,000 years of History' on 21st November 1979 for which she had also written the catalogue. In 1982 Sir David Hunt's large book 'Footprints in Cyprus' was published including Veronica's chapters on Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Cyprus and Sir David (a former High Commissioner to Cyprus) and his wife joined her widening circle of friends. Despite having successfully mothered three children in between, her fine new permanent gallery of Cypriot Antiquities was ready to be opened in the British Museum on 9th December 1987 by the Duke of Gloucester; this event being followed almost immediately by a major Colloquium on Cyprus and by the publication of the first edition of her more popular British Museum Blue Guide: 'Ancient Cyprus'. 1989 saw her edit and publish the findings of the colloquium and by 1991 she had written the early chapters in Hugh Tait's 'Five Thousand years of Glass'. Veronica was more than well equipped for this task as some 10 years earlier she had published, with Donald Harden, the British Museum's first catalogue of Greek and Roman glass. Although she had a fourth child, when 48, and the family had moved to Salisbury in 1993, Veronica continued her zest for work, usually leaving on the 06.30 train destined for the Museum, or a Classical Colloquium, or one of the many global ICOM glass conferences or even a return trip to her beloved Cyprus where her last conference was held in November 2002. In 2003 she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's which forced her into early retirement after 29 years of truly devoted service to the British Museum. She and Tim took a week's Silver Wedding anniversary return holiday to Venice but the relentless progress of Alzheimer's could not be slowed and an abundant life and a sparkling career drew to a close. Anthony Cobbold. August 2012 Based on a draft by Tim Tatton-Brown |
1: 1980 Hugh Trelawny Tatton-Brownc W/C 2: 1983 Miranda Emily Jean Tatton-Brownc H 3: 1984 Lucy Ann Tatton-Brownc H/C 4: 1993 Robert William Loyd Tatton-Brownc | |||||||
| 4 Children | ||||||||
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