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This month’s ‘Odd Socs’ column pays tribute to the late Tony Rook, who died on 11 September 2023 at the age of 91. Tony and his wife Merle Rook (who died in 2012) jointly founded the Welwyn Archaeological Society (WAS), originally to undertake fieldwork around the town. The front page of the Welwyn Times for 20 August 1965 reported that it was on such an outing that Tony ‘found an opened safe and a number of cheques lying about’. Tony informed the police and, sometime later, a reward was given for the find. Tony used it to set up a bank account and the Society was formally born.
But for the vigilance and energy of Tony and Merle, any number of late prehistoric and Roman sites would have been lost under housing developments and road schemes in the 1960s, including the rich La Tène cremation burial (known as the ‘Welwyn Garden City Chieftain burial’) now on display in the British Museum, with its amphorae, 35 other pots, a silver cup, bronze vessels, a set of glass game counters, and wooden vessels.
The Welwyn Roman Baths are the best-known of all the WAS discoveries. Excavated over a period of 12 years, the baths formed part of a large villa complex at Dicket Mead – or perhaps a mansio (a place of rest and refreshment for Roman government officials). The 3rd-century remains were set to be bulldozed when the A1(M) motorway was built, but Tony persuaded the highways authority to protect it beneath a steel vault – and so the baths remain open to the public some 9m below the embankment at Junction 6.
Not content simply to excavate and publish the baths, Tony signed up to undertake an MPhil at the UCL Institute of Archaeology to study Romano-British bath suites and how they worked, later extending his studies to become an expert in Roman building materials and their manufacture.
Kris Lockyear, Senior Lecturer at the Institute, joined the WAS in December 1975 at the age of 11, and is now the Society’s Director. He says that Tony and Merle created a group around them with a sense of shared purpose and a high degree of camaraderie that has persisted for more than 50 years, and such is the key to the success of all such societies.
Further information: https://welwynarchaeologicalsociety.org.uk
Is there a society that you would like to see profiled? Write to theeditor@archaeology.co.uk
Images: John Dettmar, courtesy of Tony Rook Legis, Wikipedia
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