Audrey Williams (archaeologist)

Williams was born Audrey Davies in Dinas Powys, Wales.[1] Her family moved to Swansea when she was 14, and she studied at Swansea Girl's High School. In 1920, she won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford to study English, the same year that the Statute for Degrees for Women was passed, giving women the right to take degrees.

She returned to Swansea after graduation in 1923 and worked as a teacher at a local school. She resigned this post when she married her first husband, Percy James Williams, a local architect. It was through Williams, who had a keen interest in Swansea ceramics, that she became involved with Swansea Museum and the Royal Institute of South Wales in the 1930s. She helped her husband to reorganise and catalogue ceramic collections within the museum. She became the Honorary Curator of Antiquities, and in 1936 compiled an accession register of all the objects, information from which is still used today. It was during this time that she first worked with W. F. Grimes who was assistant keeper of archaeology at the National Museum of Wales.[3] She excavated three Iron Age Promontory Forts on the Gower Peninsula.[1]

Between 1941 and 1944 she was appointed Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments by the Ministry of Works. She was to excavate archaeological sites before they were developed for defences or military instillations, again working alongside Grimes.[2] As part of her work for the Ministry of Works, she excavated a number of sites in Swansea, Oxfordshire, Dorset and Pembrokeshire[1] and in recognition of her work she was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In July 1944, she was elected President of the Royal Institution of South Wales.

In 1945 she left Swansea and was appointed as curator of Verulamium Museum in St Albans. From there she began her excavation career in London and south-east England, working alongside many notable archaeologists of the time including Glyn Daniel, Kathleen Kenyon and Mortimer Wheeler. She was director of excavations for the Canterbury Excavations Committee, which was set up in 1944 to investigate archaeology uncovered during bombing raids, and in advance of redevelopment.[4] Sheppard Frere succeeded her in 1946 as director. They co-wrote several publications about the Roman excavations, and she published two articles in her own name.

In London, she once again worked with Grimes, on excavations at sites in the City of London affected by bomb damage, prior to their redevelopment, including Barbican, St Brides and Fleet Street. One of the most prominent excavations she worked on was the Temple of Mithras, which was discovered at a building site at Walbrook in 1954. The unexpected discovery of a bust of Mithras on the last scheduled day of the excavation generated considerable press and public interest, debates in Parliament and discussion in the Cabinet. The excavation was extended, allowing further discoveries to be made, but delaying the construction. Grimes is often solely credited as the director of the excavations, however he was running another site in London at the same time. Williams was on site every day and her work makes up much of the archive;[2] because of her contribution, John Shepherd ensured her name was included in the title in his report of the excavation, The Temple of Mithras, London: Excavations by W. F. Grimes and A. Williams at the Walbrook.[1] Grimes always described her as the better excavator.[3]

In 1950 she divorced P J Williams, and she remarried in 1952 to Illtyd Stockwood, which also ended in divorce in 1956. In 1959 she married W. F. Grimes and retired from professional archaeology. The couple returned to Wales in 1973, to Williams' home in Brynmill in Swansea. Williams died in 1978[1] and her ashes were scattered at Pwlldu Bay on the Gower Peninsula.

• "Williams, Audrey: 19 Articles and two monographs". British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography. Council for British Archaeology.