Edward Pyddoke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Whately Pyddoke (1909 – 8 September 1976) was a British archaeologist, antiquarian, and author on archaeological and related subjects, who served as Secretary and Registrar for the University of London Institute of Archaeology.
Pyddoke was the elder son of Henry Whately Pyddoke, of Bonnyrigg, Tonbridge, Kent, formerly of Oxhill, Loughton, Essex, and Edith, daughter of Major John Wilson, of the Scots Greys.[1] He had an elder sister, Silvia (1908–1961), who served as consultant anaesthetist to the hospitals in Maidstone, and a younger brother, John (b. 1917).[2][3] Henry Pyddoke was involved in the social reform activities undertaken by Toynbee Hall, founded by Samuel Barnett, at whose request he undertook an investigation in the winter of 1894 into the casual ward[4] system, involving over six hundred interviews.[5][6] The Pyddoke family were minor gentry, originally gunmakers named Whately (also Whateley) who through a marriage in the 1700s inherited the estate of the Piddock family (including The Austins, at Handsworth, Staffordshire) and adopted that family's name.[7][8][9]
He was educated at Tonbridge School in Kent,[1] then at the University of London Institute of Archaeology[10] in their first cohort of students for the Postgraduate Diploma of Prehistoric Archaeology, in 1946/ 7; amongst the five other students were Grace Simpson and Nancy Sandars. Based at St John's Lodge, Regent's Park, London, and started by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, they were taught by eminent archaeologists including V. Gordon Childe, Kathleen Kenyon, F. E. Zeuner, and Stuart Piggott.[11] He took the examinations in 1948, and was awarded the Diploma.[12] Whilst a student, Pyddoke was appointed a part-time assistant in the Department of European Archaeology, responsible for "arranging and cataloguing the relevant section of the collection".[13]
