Valerie Fenwick, my mother, was an astonishing character born Valerie Foulkes in 1936. She remembered happy toddler years in Ruislip, with frequent visits to the bomb shelter during the start of the WWII Blitz. She was evacuated with her baby brother and mother to the Devon countryside.

Valerie discovered in her childhood countryside rambles, a love of the outdoors and examining things on the ground. As a schoolgirl she joined archaeological excavations during her Summer holidays.

Valerie worked ferociously hard at school to be able to study Classics at Newnham College Cambridge. Once there she had a fine old time.

After graduating, she took a conservator role at the British Museum. This set her life on a course she continued till her last days, which ended in the new year of 2025, aged 88.

Aged only 25, the British Museum sent Valerie to Jerusalem to preserve and mount the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is one of several working visits to the Middle East during her career where she discovered the plight of the Palestinian people first hand.

She married in 1965, becoming Valerie Fenwick. In 1967, with a young baby sometimes in tow, she set up the renewed excavation at Sutton Hoo, as deputy director of the dig under Rupert Bruce-Mitford. She sought out Basil Brown as a starting point, and learnt much from him about the 1939 excavation to build upon. In 1969 she added an 11 month old baby on site too - myself.

Valerie was seconded to the National Maritime Museum to excavate the Anglo-Saxon Graveney Boat in 1971, later televised on ITV’s Chronicle series. This excavation interrupted her Sutton Hoo work, which meant only part of her research there was written up. She published belated thought-provoking conclusions on the findings of the Mound 1 ship burial at Sutton Hoo only in 2023 in the Antiquaries Journal. A subsequent article will be made available posthumously.

Together with others who understood the historic importance and vulnerability of offshore wreck sites and inland boat discoveries, she founded the Nautical Archaeology Society. This helped to formalise the discipline, and formed a basis for the long campaign that succeeded in passing the Protection of Wrecks Act of 1973. These were two of her proudest achievements.

She led a multi-threaded professional life. After about 15 years with museums, Valerie held various short and long term archaeological and editorial contracts, which enabled her to fund on a shoestring her own excavation. The site was Burrow Hill near Butley, Suffolk, digging every Summer from 1979 and throughout the 1980’s. There were significant Anglo Saxon finds, with insights that reflect mainly on times subsequent to the Sutton Hoo ship burials. She innovated use of metal detection during careful stratified excavation and the development of community excavation, harnessing the skills and interests of local people.

Somewhere between everything else, she had a range of other accomplishments. Valerie organised the rowing of the recreation of Argo, the boat of Jason and the Argonauts fame, from Maidenhead to Parliament, for more nautical campaigning in 1989. In 1998, with Alison Gale, she authored an accessible book on Historic Shipwrecks.

The third of her favourite success stories was the formation of MAT, the Maritime Archaeological Trust, which has become internationally respected at researching and publishing on undersea archaeology.

In later life she moved to Suffolk, her natural home after all those years of excavating there. With her friend Vic Harrup she published Untold Tales of the Suffolk Sandlings, a book full of riveting historical stories you will read of nowhere else.

She helped rescue internationally significant boats condemned to be destroyed when Eyemouth Museum went bankrupt. The ones she herself purchased and temporarily stored in a kind friend’s barn, were donated to the maritime museum in Tczew, Gdansk, where the exhibition celebrates her achievement.

In the 2010’s she made several long expeditions to Goa, recording the boat building techniques of the rapidly dying skills of the local fishermen. On a trip to Gozo and Malta, she made a discovery about the pre-historic use of rafts for sea-faring there.

Valerie continued to investigate, study and collaborate until her last days dying of bowel cancer at home. The last writings she wanted me to read to her were all archaeological publications. She basked in the new British Museum publication, Silk Roads.

Valerie leaves friends, family and colleagues bereft from the loss of a supportive, fun, intelligent, forthright and original person, with a head full of incredibly varied knowledge, and always on for a good argument. Our lives were much enriched by her, as was archaeology.

She supported many historic and research causes. Alongside these she was deeply concerned for the most vulnerable and in danger people in the world. This included regularly supporting Medecins Sans Frontiers / Doctors Without Borders. Since she has already left funds to archaeological causes, her collection in memoriam is for MSF, to support those amazing medical people who go where others do not dare to tread. Please give generously what you can afford, in her memory.

[photo credit: Christopher Farmer, 2010]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is the world's leading medical humanitarian aid organisation.

We provide emergency assistance to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics and natural or man-made disasters, without discrimination and irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.

We work in over 70 countries and go to the places where others cannot or choose not to go.