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2014 Pendlebury The TRUSTY SERVANT PENDLEBURY SUPPLEMENT N OVEMBER 2014 1 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT –PENDLEBURY S UPPLEMENT In Heraklion, the largest town of Crete, in the office of the two British Vice-Consuls, there hangs a remarkable picture between those of the King and the Queen. It shows a man of about thirty-five, with unmistakably English features, in Cretan national dress: high boots, wide stockings like a skirt, a close-fitting black waistcoat, heavily embroidered cape, and a black cap. This picture gave us our first acquaintance with Mr John Pendlebury. Who was this Englishman? SS Obersturmbannführer Baron Eberhard von Künsberg , 4th June 1941 2 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT –PENDLEBURY S UPPLEMENT Wykeham Patrons’ Trip: 2014 In the Footsteps of John Pendlebury Peter Stormonth Darling (C, 1945-50) PSD: In late May, a party of heroics in the resistance on Crete in 1941 was ‘volunteered’ to write up the lion’s Wykeham Patrons and wives, were, as was usual in Special Operations, share of the following commentary on under the firm but gentle leadership of never publicly recognized. He was not, for David Fellowes, set off from Heathrow on example, among the seventy notable Old the Wykeham Patrons’ trip to the a mission to the northern Peloponnese Wykehamists selected by Malcolm Burr in northern Peloponnese and Crete that and Crete ‘in the footsteps of’ a very his excellent trilogy, All from the Same took place from 26th May to 2nd June unusual Wykehamist, John Pendlebury Place (1999, 2001 and 2003), although I 2014. Further contributions have come (D, 1918-23). Our group, twenty six at its understand from its author that he only from Alan Lovell (B, 1967-72) and largest, included the Warden-elect, narrowly missed the cut. Nor is he among Charles Sinclair (B, 1961-66); a past over 160 prominent Old Wykehamists of Mrs Cathy Townsend , the Warden, Andrew Large (F, 1956-60); the 20th century listed in Wikipedia. For Headmaster’s wife. PSD has also three other members of the Governing those of us lucky enough to be on the trip, written a postscript about George Body, Mark Loveday (H, 1957-62), Nick Shaun had written a fascinating booklet Jellicoe (E, 1931-36), who had played Ferguson (C, 1961-66) and Andrew Joy under the title ‘John Pendlebury, The his part on Crete in 1942. (C, 1970-74); and the Headmaster. We Uncrowned King of Crete - Warrior and differed considerably in age (classes of Archaeologist’ , which described his life and 1950 to 1974), energy, agility and classical included pictures and interesting quotes learning. David, together with our senior from Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dilys Powell, guide, Shaun Hullis, former Classics don Monty Rendall, The Wykehamist , at Winchester, had planned the trip with Pendlebury himself and others. With enormous skill and forethought. Thanks Shaun’s permission, I have borrowed from to our virtually unflappable and always it freely in writing these notes. good-humoured leader, it all went John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury smoothly, and we were to become was a remarkable enthralled by Shaun’s unpretentious person with many and scholarship in all matters historical, varied achievements archaeological and Wykehamical. in his short life. He Our journey took us first to the was born in 1904, the northern Peloponnese for two days, only son of a London staying in Nauplion, thence, after a day- surgeon and grandson time stopover in Athens to visit the of Sir Thomas Devitt, a member of a British School at Athens (‘BSA’), to prominent shipping family. His interest in Agios Nikolaos on the eastern side of Greek archaeology began while he was in Crete, which was our base for exploring his last year at Winchester during a visit Mount Karphi and Knossos. These visits with a young don to the BSA, followed by are eloquently described in the a walking tour to Thebes and then contributions of Alan Lovell and Cathy Mycenae, for which he was to develop a Townsend which follow. special affection. At Cambridge he won a first in the Classical Tripos, Part II with a Pendlebury’s story may not be that distinction in archaeology, and from there well known among Wykehamists, which he was granted a studentship at the BSA. is perhaps not surprising since his death at In 1930, at the age of just 25, he took up the age of 36 meant that his career as an his appointment as Curator at Knossos in archaeologist was incomplete, while his Crete, the grandest and most visited of 3 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT –PENDLEBURY S UPPLEMENT the way, he left some helpful advice for According to his close friends, today’s tourists in Greece: ‘Always bargain; Pendlebury had a great sense of mischief remember that if you pay the man what he and fun. Certainly he was not averse to a asks, he worries himself nearly sick …. how touch of theatre. He used to dress up in much more he might have got’ . the evenings in full Cretan splendour wearing a deep blue cloak over white From one of his digs in Egypt he sent leather boots, breeches and a turban, an assortment of fragments to Winchester, often with a dagger or a gun, and probably which were described in The Wykehamist carrying his favourite leather-bound of December 1931 as ‘some interesting swordstick. Tall, handsome and with a additions to the case of Egyptian antiquities housed in Moberly Library’ . They are now held in the School’s Treasury. His true professional love, however, was for Crete, which he considered ‘a wonderful country, much richer than Greece’ . He identified at least 700 archaeological sites on the island. He walked its entire length, climbing mountains and jumping walls. In At Cambridge the words of one of his Cretan workers at the bronze age Minoan ‘palaces’, a post Knossos, Manolaki Akoumianos, ‘he knew which was partly in the gift of the BSA, the island like his own hand, spoke Greek like but needed the support of Sir Arthur a true Cretan, and could drink any Cretan Evans, the father figure, excavator and, under the table’ . He got to know the for a long time, owner of Knossos. ‘Kapetans’ (local chieftains) as well as the Pendlebury was ambivalent about Evans’ shepherds and could speak all their controversial restorations at Knossos and dialects. In his own assessment he knew later described him as ‘ceramically Crete and its people better than anyone. incompetent’. For the decade of the 1930s, Pendlebury was busily and happily engaged in various archaeological activities in Crete and Egypt - he spoke Arabic as well as Greek - including excavations and digs, cataloguing fragments at Knossos and writing guidebooks. His ‘Archaeology of Crete: an introduction’ (1939) was warmly acclaimed by Monty Rendall, his Headmaster at Winchester, who called it a ‘magnum opus’ . His formal post at Knossos ended in 1934, but he seems to have had a relaxed attitude to paid employment, and was happy to carry on as a freelance, cushioned no doubt by some money from his mother’s side. He recorded his work and his findings meticulously in notebooks, and in letters to his father and his wife, and took voluminous photographs which he put into albums, with the negatives carefully stored too. He made sketches and wrote poems. And, by Dressed as one of his Egyptian workmen, Pendlebury surveys the site at Tell el-Amarna, in Egypt 4 T HE T RUSTY S ERVANT Ariadne (1973), which is essentially his the Stratigraphical Museum, which biography, ‘he would never ignore an houses an immense collection of shards offence’ . gathered over the years on the site, all carefully documented. Passionate as he was for his wide- ranging archaeological interests, In September 1928, at 23, he married Pendlebury found plenty of time for sports Hilda White, a fellow archaeologist and a and play. At Cambridge he won the high school teacher who was 13 years older and jump in 1927 in the university match several inches shorter. They had two against Oxford, jumping six feet, a new children, a son, David, and a daughter, record, using the then conventional Joan. As it happens, I was an almost exact scissors style and landing on a hard contemporary of David’s at Winchester sandpit. (Today the world record is over and before that at a prep school, Abberley eight feet, but achieved by highly paid Hall in Worcestershire, during the War professional athletes using jumping years, and it was at Abberley that he methods not envisaged in Pendlebury’s would have learnt of his father’s death. Pendlebury demonstrating his high-jumping skills outside day, spring-loaded shoes and soft landing David was a useful cricketer (Winchester the Dig House at Tell el-Amarna in 1931 pads!). He had phenomenal energy and 2nd XI) and boxer, and inherited his glass eye (the result of an unexplained liked to walk long distances, fast. He father’s talent for high-jumping. He accident when he was two years old), he enjoyed tennis, cricket, hockey and followed his father and grandfather to must have cut a striking figure, and one fencing, and built a tennis court at Pembroke College at Cambridge, became has the impression he did like to be Knossos in the grounds of Evans’ house, a doctor and practiced in Durban, where noticed. He was charming, but had a Villa Ariadne. One wonders how he he died in 1997. temper when aroused, and as Dilys Powell would have reacted to its later use for an wrote in her enchanting book, The Villa expansion of another of his enthusiasms, As has been mentioned above, it AL: was in 1923, at the age of 18 and in his last Easter vacation whilst at Winchester that John Pendlebury first visited Greece.
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