CULTURE INTERVIEW
No one tried to persuade me to sit in a library studying instead of going out on the archaeological digs I so loved
runs much, much deeper than that – quite literally to the bedrock. Lifelong connections “My relationship with Cambridgeshire began when I was a young child in the early 50s,” Francis begins. “I was brought up in north Hertfordshire, and the land where my family farmed was on the edge of the chalk hills that overlook East Anglia. You could see Cambridge in the far, far distance, and the Fens. It gave me a feel for the extent of the British landscape. “The thing that struck me about the Fens wasn’t the wetness, but the richness, the fertility; the trees were luxuriant, the grass lovely and lush, and the cattle all looked fat. A fantastic landscape. It quite caught me up.” The family made frequent trips into Cambridge during that time, as his uncle was a Fellow of Trinity – the college that Francis himself would go on to attend in 1964, reading archaeology. He admits, however, to not being entirely dedicated to his studies! “I spent most of my time organising the college’s May Ball. I persuaded the very famous cartoonist Carl Giles to do the cover of the booklet that students received on arrival. It depicted Rab Butler, ex-foreign secretary and Master of Trinity, dancing outside the Great Gate with the cartoon character Grandma Giles. It was very successful!” Francis’s student days also coincided with bands such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones exploding onto the modern music scene. “It was a great time to be in Cambridge; I was very lucky. We had some wild times!” he recalls. But the other thing he liked most about the city – and especially his college – was the way that it accepted, and in fact encouraged, people to find their own way in life. “No one tried to persuade me to sit in a library studying books instead of going out on the archaeological digs I so loved. They were very understanding like that.
“In fact, it was one of my ex-tutors who, after I’d graduated, said: ‘You need to get away from here and do something on your own – if I were you, I’d cross the Atlantic and make your own mark in the world.’ So, I did. It was on his advice that I went to Toronto and got a job at the Royal Ontario Museum. “Two years later I was running a dig… in England… for the Royal Ontario Museum! So, it got me back here in the end, although I have never regretted crossing the Atlantic. It was a wonderful experience. And you see England from a new perspective when you come in with a load of Canadian students!” he laughs. Fertile ground The project that Francis embarked on for the museum was, you guessed it, in Cambridgeshire, allowing him to get back to Fenland soil – rich both in the growth he’d observed as a child and in archaeology. With Peterborough New Town now in existence and construction of the bypass underway, the next area earmarked for development was what would become the eastern industry area of Peterborough,
LOOKING BACK The front cover of the Trinity College May Ball booklet, featuring an original illustration by cartoonist Carl Giles (above); Flag Fen (below) and one of the dig pits that revealed its Bronze Age timber causeway (below right)
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK JANUARY 2026 19
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