Timothy William Potter (6 July 1944 – 11 January 2000)

Abstract

Mola di Monte Gelato (1986-90), to his Chairmanship of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters (1991-6), and finally his inspiring role as Chair in the Tiber Valley Project, earn him a major place in the School's annals. His premature death deprives the institution of one of its most robust champions; but the generosity with which he encouraged younger scholars will ensure that his contribution will not be forgotten, and the lead he gave will be followed. Tim's clipped and old-fashioned accent, audible in his English and his Italian alike, seemed to mark him as a scion of the Establishment. In fact, he came from a family of schoolmasters. His father, Cedric, was long headmaster of March Grammar School, near Ely in the Fens: himself the son of a headmaster, William, of the Roan School at Greenwich, he set an example of good organization and selfdiscipline, though the enthusiasm and generosity of spirit in which Tim was so abundant came rather from his adored mother, Phil. He grew up both in the shadow of and inspired by a brother older by five years, Christopher, who excelled as a classical scholar and later followed family tradition in becoming a headmaster. Chris led the way in discovering the excitement of archaeology: it was on his excavation of nearby sites in the Fens, especially Grandford (1958-64), that Tim as a schoolboy began to acquire the highly practical skills of fieldwork that continued to give him pleasure through his career. Tim was less of an academic star than Chris; and it is perhaps in a childhood sense of academic insecurity that lay the roots both of a need for recognition and of the unflagging efforts made to merit it. Even if he did not share his brother's talents at Latin and Greek, he achieved distinctions in all three 'A'-levels (English, History and Archaeology), and received particular commendation for a paper on the Roman Fenland drawing on his own fieldwork: the essay provided material for the Royal Geographical Society Survey of Roman Fenland Sites, by Peter Salway and others. In 1963 he won a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, to read History, but soon changed to Archaeology and Anthropology, achieving a first in his Part I (and promotion to a College Exhibition), a first in prelims to Part 2 (and with it a Senior Scholarship), and a first in Part 2. Already as an undergraduate, he manifested his formidable energy in publishing: a note on his Fenland work and a substantial paper on the Roman pottery of Coldham Clamp. The foundations for his later massive publication of Stonea were laid in this period. Applying for a Rome Scholarship before his finals in 1966, he received notably glowing references from Joan Liversidge and Brian Hope-Taylor, who paid tribute not only to his already established talent for excavation, but to his amiability: it was recalled how camping on a site cut off from most amenities and in appalling x