John Ronald Lidster | |
---|---|
Born | 1916 |
Died | 2008 | (aged 92)
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Artist, Archaeologist and Curator |
Known for | Rescue excavation of Bronze Age Barrows in Yorkshire and the excavation of the Roman kiln site at Cantley. |
John Ronald Lidster (1916–2008) [1] was a British artist, archaeologist and curator based in Yorkshire.
Lidster was born in Hull in 1916 and moved to Scarborough as a child. [1] During the Second World War he was an artist with the Royal Army Medical College in London. [1] In 1946 he joined the Scarborough and District Archaeological Society where he met William Lamplough. Between 1948 and 1961, Lamplough and Lidster undertook rescue excavations of thirty-seven [1] barrows in the North York Moors; [2] [3] [4] the artefacts from which are now in the Yorkshire Museum. [5] Lidster created detailed paintings of the landscapes in which the barrows are situated. [6] He and William Lamplough also led excavations for the Scarborough and District Archaeological Society in 1951 at the site of King Alfred's Cave ( Ebberston, North Yorkshire). [7] [8]
Lidster acted as the first secretary of the recently founded Scarborough Geological Society in the 1950s
In 1950, Lidster worked as a technician and, later, as the Assistant Curator of the Wood End Museum in Scarborough. [1] In 1955 he moved to Doncaster Museum as Assistant Curator. He was later Keeper of the museum, a position he left in 1966–7. [1]
Whilst working in Doncaster, in 1959, Lidster investigated the Roman kilns site at Cantley. [9] The diagrams produced by Lidster of the Cantley kilns were used in 1962 as the basis for an experimental archaeology project to reconstruct and fire a replica of Cantley Kiln 31. [10]