Obituary : John Dunbar | 9 Doi
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Proc Soc Antiq Scot 147 (2017), 9–16 OBITUARY : JOHN DUNBAR | 9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.9750/PSAS.147.0003 Obituary John Dunbar 1 March 1930 – 6 May 2018 The reserved demeanour of the late John conduct and management style marked him Greenwell Dunbar, OBE, MA, FSA, Honorary out as an archetypal gentleman-scholar, ever Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland a model of thoughtful empathy, integrity and and of the Royal Incorporation of Architects clarity in his dealings with friends, colleagues in Scotland, belied the fact that he was a and the academic world at large. He was my towering figure in the transformation of Scottish immediate boss at the Royal Commission on the architectural scholarship in the second half of Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland the 20th century, co-founder and doyen of the (RCAHMS) for 21 years, and he remained a modern discipline in Scotland. In depth and kind and friendly mentor after his retirement in breadth of content, couched in a characteristically 1990 when, as Head of Architecture, I had the crisp writing style, his research led – and in impossible task of assuming part of his mantle. the area of Early Classicism in Scotland still Elected in November 1953, at his death John had leads – by example, while his polite but firm been a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of John G Dunbar, Secretary RCAHMS, 1978–90, taken December 1989. © Crown Copyright: HES. SC 1128484 10 | SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND, 2017 Scotland for over 64 years. He served twice as of, English 17th-century and Scottish medieval a Councillor (1964–6 and 1977–81), was Vice- history respectively. The Oxford friendships he President from 1982 until 1986, and, following forged with both Archie Duncan and Howard his highly acclaimed Rhind Lectures in 1998, Colvin (1919–2007), Research Fellow at St was made an Honorary Fellow in 2000–1. John’s College from 1948, blossomed and John was born at a nursing home in endured as lifelong and productive academic Hampstead, London, into a family whose partnerships. residence was in suburban Mill Hill, Middlesex. In 1952 he graduated BA, later converted He was the second child of John and Marie (née to MA, and in 1953 he was appointed to the Aston) Dunbar, his elder sister, Mary (1925– staff of RCAHMS in Edinburgh, following the 2011), who remained unmarried and settled in retirement in 1952 of the architect G P H (Pat) London, eventually rising to a senior post in Watson, who had been engaged in Commission The London Library. John’s father was from survey work since 1911. For a junior investigator Paisley, and of his background we know only charged with the recording and researching of that his mother, John’s paternal grandmother, historic buildings this was the start of yet another was a MacGregor. John’s own mother came perfect, lifelong match, a career ideally suited from Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire, to a young Anglo-Scottish fieldworker who and Greenwell was evidently a name of frequent combined a strong sense of purpose, organisation occurrence and special significance in her family. and adventure with a keen eye for building details John’s father was employed as a Marine and an outstanding flair for historical research, Superintendent, responsible for marine analysis and the effective use of the written word. engineering operations, by the Anglo-Persian/ He was to serve RCAHMS for 37 years, the last Iranian Oil Company, which, after 1954, became 12, between 1978 and 1990, as Secretary (that British Petroleum (BP). Based initially at the is, Chief Executive) of a body which by then company’s headquarters in London, John Senior employed around 100 staff. was re-located to Scotland on the outbreak On first moving to Edinburgh, John took of war in 1939, first to Edinburgh and then to lodgings in the city, confiding to a university Glasgow. When the family moved to Clydeside, friend that ‘my landlady keeps on telling me John Junior was sent back to London where he she is going to have to make sacrifices. I think lived with friends and continued his education in I am the sacrifice she has in mind’. Regular Hampstead at University College School. During fieldwork in the Border counties, especially his schooldays, among other things, he developed Peeblesshire, increased his familiarity with, rowing and teamwork skills on the River Thames, and attraction to, the scenic hinterland south of where, in his own words, he became ‘intimately Edinburgh, and it was not long before he made acquainted with the back of Roger Bannister’s his home there among the Pentland Hills. He neck’, as his place in the boat was just behind first rented a cottage at Nine Mile Burn before Roger Bannister (1929–2018), another recently manfully setting to work, in the early 1960s, on deceased, distinguished ‘Old Gower’. the restoration of the ruinous shell of Patie’s Mill After school, between July 1948 and on the banks of the River North Esk at Carlops. September 1949, John did his National Service Largely by his own efforts, he turned what had with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in successively been, since 1800, a water-powered Germany before going up to Balliol College, woollen manufactory, meal mill and poultry Oxford, to read Modern History. He remained farm into what he himself later described as ‘a strongly attached to Balliol ever after, and, with much loved home and garden’. What had been hindsight, it seems clear that two of his personal the curtilage of the mill came to be surrounded tutors there, Christopher Hill (1912–2003) and by a fine beech hedge that he planted in 1964–5, A A M (Archie) Duncan (1926–2017), nurtured and the mill was augmented by a stone garage, and honed his nascent interests in, and mastery built by John himself, the keystone of its entrance OBITUARY : JOHN DUNBAR | 11 arch bearing the inscription, ‘JGD EMB 1974’, a analytical approach of his day job with the gift from his RCAHMS colleagues to mark his Commission, sub-divided thematically into marriage to Elizabeth Mill Blyth and to crown broad categories which were closely akin to his own considerable practical achievements. those of the Inventories, namely castellated, Given the burgeoning of Scottish domestic, ecclesiastical, urban, industrial architectural history over the past few decades, and rural. Commissioned as a popular, un- it is hard for us now to appreciate the state of referenced guide to Scotland’s buildings, the the subject, hardly then a profession, as it was book was immediately recognised as a landmark in 1953, and to understand the magnitude of the publication. Slightly abridged, re-titled as The transformation that scholars like John Dunbar Architecture of Scotland, and with three of the quietly but effectively wrought over the next later chapters re-arranged into stylistic periods quarter century. From the outset, however, – Early Classicism, Georgian and Victorian – circumstances could hardly have been more it occasioned no surprise when it went into a propitious for a young architectural scholar in second edition in 1978, the year John took over post-war heritage service. In 1948, a new Royal from Kenneth Steer as Secretary of RCAHMS. Warrant had given the Commission discretion Although the coverage and interpretations of to include in its county Inventories structures some areas and themes have been outdated by of a date later than 1707. Understandably later research, both volumes retain a freshness, pragmatic about the impact a completely open- lucidity and appeal that have not dimmed over ended commitment would have on resources, the the decades. Much of this is attributable to the Commission decided to extend its remit only to timeless style and quality of the writing itself, 1850 on a selective basis, but even that limited a classic blend of well-turned summaries and expansion represented a massive increase in judgements, conveyed with precision, pace and cultural scope and interest. Additionally, while balance; the literary embodiment of physical greater emphasis was being placed on graphic and mental skills developed as a young oarsman and photographic illustration and on historical perhaps? As a writer and researcher, John research as aids to interpretation, from the Dunbar was, quite simply, a master craftsman. publication of the Inventory of Selkirkshire It is no coincidence that both of these books, (1957) onwards, detailed accounts of monuments along with the second volume of the Inventory were being grouped thematically by types, not of Stirlingshire, are among the most dishevelled topographically by parishes, allowing a more and tattered in this writer’s own collection, a discursive, analytical approach to come through proud mark of decades of intensive reference and the introductory essays. These new approaches scholarly abuse in the pre-digital age! were rewardingly applied to the revisions then Framed by a broad knowledge of British and being made to the pre-war accounts of the Border Irish architectural history, John’s considerable counties, most notably Peeblesshire (published academic reputation rests solidly on two main in two volumes in 1967), to the architecturally areas of study: Scottish medieval castles and rich and exciting county of Stirlingshire, freshly palaces; and Scottish domestic architecture – and selected in the early 1950s (and published, also architects and craftsmen – of the early modern in two volumes, in 1963), and, from 1959, to the era. Although they have tended to be separately relatively unknown delights of Argyll and the compartmented, these subject areas were in fact western seaboard, all fertile territory for a young parts of a single intellectual spectrum, seamlessly architectural investigator. interconnected by John’s close familiarity with A by-product of this busy phase of activity the documentary source materials of the centuries carried over into his own spare time was John’s between about 1450 and 1750.