1

The Foundation and Early Development of the British School at Athens, 1886-1900

Catherine Morgan

Director, The British School at Athens

Since the establishment of the first foreign archaeological School in Athens, the École

française d‟Athènes, in 1846, the city has become a unique laboratory of international research.1

The emergence of the capital as a cultural centre is intimately entwined with the study and

practice of archaeology both in Greece and across Europe, as a channel both for nationalist

discourse and for international collaboration.2 The École française d‟Athènes was followed in

1874 by the Athens department of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, in 1881 by the

American School of Classical Studies, and then in 1886 by the British School at Athens: and the

process continues, with seventeen foreign schools currently active (the highest concentration

anywhere in the world). 3

Among its peers in the first wave of foundations, the British School was distinctive in several

respects. As an independent foundation, financially dependent on public subscription, it had to

remain sensitive to a wider range of opinion than its government-funded French and German

peers,4 and its research programme, especially in the early years, was more reliant on the chance

of outside interests. The School was thus peculiarly exposed to debates about the nature and

study of Hellenic cultures (plural) which characterized late nineteenth-century British thought

across a very wide spectrum, from Classics in the universities to the practice of architecture and

1 I am grateful to the Archivist of the British School, Amalia Kakissis, and to Christopher Stray for

invaluable discussion (and for sight of C. Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb: a Life in Letters [Cambridge Classical Journal

Supp. 38, 2013 forthcoming] in advance of publication). The following account draws on the School‟s

archival holdings (i.e. the correspondence of School officers and certain excavation records; regrettably, the

first Minute book of the Managing Committee has been missing since the early 20th century), as well as

published accounts based largely on the School‟s own publications and on press reports. It is not a

reiteration of the well-studied facts of this period, but rather an attempt to place them within the broader

British and Aegean cultural and educational context of the late 1870s until 1900, when the opening of

excavations at Knossos defined the School‟s archaeological activity on the world stage.

2 E. Bastéa, The Creation of Modern Athens. Planning the Myth (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000),

69-104; Y. Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), chapter 3; M.

Mazower, „Archaeology, nationalism and the land in modern Greece‟, in D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos

(eds), A Singular Antiquity. Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-century Greece (Athens, Benaki Museum,

2008), 33-41.

3 E. Korka (ed.), Foreign Archaeological Schools in Greece from the 19th to the 21st Century (Athens, Melissa, 2007).

4 Compare: D. Mulliez, „Les textes et leur évolution‟, BCH 120 (1996), 23-50; U. Jantzen, Einhundert Jahre

Athener Institut 1874-1974 (Mainz, von Zabern, 1986), 1-36.

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the applied arts. Furthermore, it was founded at a critical stage in the politics of the Ottoman

eastern Aegean, in which Britain was deeply engaged.5 Opportunities for research were shifting

fast, with the hand-over of Cyprus to Britain in 1878 and, at least in many European minds, the

opening up of Crete following the Treaty of Halepa, although the history of abortive attempts to

excavate at Knossos following Minos Kalokairinos‟ discoveries of 1878 confirms that this was far

from straightforward (at least until the establishment of the Admirals‟ Regime). Nonetheless in

1885, just one year before the British School opened, Federico Halbherr, later a founding father

of the Italian School, conducted extensive campaigns at a number of sites across Crete, Knossos

included, chiefly focused on recovering inscriptions.6

These prospects were, however, tempered by changing attitudes to antiquities on the part of

the Ottoman authorities. Defeat by Russia in 1877 marked a turning point in state use of

antiquity to articulate imperial identity and relations with Europe. Thereafter, the Imperial

Ottoman Museum was expanded and rehoused, and a more interventionist approach taken to

securing for the collection Greek and Roman antiquities from within the Empire (Crete

included).7 The traditional, cultural and/or diplomatic routes to securing excavations and

antiquities were thus harder to negotiate.8 For example, in 1877, Edhem Pasha, father of future

Museum Director, Osman Hamdi Bey, responded to British attempts to resume excavation in

Mesopotamia after the Crimean War by attempting (unsuccessfully) to insist on an Anglo-

Ottoman convention whereby all finds would stay in the Imperial Treasury and publication rights

would be shared.9 So at the time of the British School‟s foundation, independent Greece was a

more attractive base from which to explore the wider Hellenic world. The work based at, or

published by, the School in its early years reflects this vision. A case in point is the excavation at

Naukratis begun by Flinders Petrie in 1884-5, and continued in 1885-6 for the Egypt Exploration

Society by the future BSA director Ernest Gardner, and then for the School by David Hogarth.10

5 Reviewed by R. Holland and D. Markides, The British and the Hellenes. Struggles for Mastery in the Eastern

Mediterranean 1850-1960 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006), chapters 4, 5 and 7.

6 C. Morgan, „Federico Halbherr and Knossos‟, ASAtene 87 (2009), 43-67.

7 W.M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed. Museums, Archaeology and the Visualisation of History in the Late Ottoman

Empire (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 2003), 83-97, 105-109.

8 See e.g. L.P. Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British

Museum (Farnham, Ashgate, 2009), 137-88.

9 E. Eldem, „An Ottoman archaeologist caught between two worlds: Osman Hamdi Bey‟, in D. Shankland

(ed.), Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia. The Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck,

1878-1920 vol.1 (Istanbul, Isis Press, 2004), 131-2.

10 D.G. Hogarth, „Excavations at Naukratis‟, BSA 5 (1898-9), 26-97. For a list of work conducted, see D.

Gill, „The British School at Athens and archaeological research in the late Ottoman empire‟, in Shankland,

Hasluck, 223-55 (discussion slightly expanded as D. Gill, Sifting the Soil of Greece [London, Institute of

Classical Studies, 2011], chapter 10).

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Equally, the Cyprus Exploration Fund, opened in 1887-8 under the auspices of the Society for

the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, ensured that Cyprus remained a focus of School attention

from its earliest years.11 The counter-proposal that the School should be located in Smyrna or on

Cyprus, addressed by Richard Jebb in his 1883 appeal for the foundation of a British School,12

reflected fast fading political and cultural realities. Smyrna offered less security and Cyprus (at

least according to Jebb) less research potential. Both areas could be explored from a base in

Athens but neither could compete with the emotive name of Athens, and the growing role and

resources of the city as a research centre. The Archaeological Society of Athens was by then

approaching 50 years old,13 a law establishing central regulation of archaeology by the new Greek

state had been passed in 1834 (also providing for a central public museum to house the

collections then being created), 14 and the French and German Schools were established and

results of their great excavations at Delos and Olympia widely publicised.15 In comparison with

the Levant, archaeological activity was more consistently regulated, but there existed a system,

relative clarity, resources and greater prospects of achieving outstanding results than could be

found in the increasingly unpredictable late Ottoman empire.

The most recent work on the foundation of the British School attempts to present it as a

continuation of the long history of British antiquarian interest in Greece.16 Yet it is more

precisely of its time in many respects, from the nature of the work promoted and undertaken,

which required a physical presence in the country and on which I will comment presently, to the

foundation appeal which cleverly drew on old and wider networks of patronage in the Levant

and the Greek diaspora (Pantelis Rallis was a founder Trustee, for example), and on specific

11 British School at Athens. Report of the Executive Committee 1887-88 and of the Meeting of Subscribers, July 18th

1888, 3-4.

12 R.C. Jebb, „A Plea for a British Institute at Athens‟, reprinted with modifications, from the Fortnightly

Review, May 1883 (London, Chapman and Hall), 16-17.

13 On the foundation and early work of the Society, see V. Petrakos, ‟Η ἐν Αθηναίς ’Αρχαιολογική

Ἑταιρεια. ’Η ἰστορία των 150 χρονών της. 1837-1987 (Athens, Archaeological Society of Athens, 1987),

17-84.

14 N. Kaltsas, The National Archaeological Museum (Athens, EFG Eurobank Ergasias/John S. Latsis Public

Benefit Foundation, 2007), 15-20; A. Gazi, „National museums in Greece: history, ideology, narratives‟, in

P. Aronsson and G. Elgenius (eds), European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the

European Citizen (Linköping, Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011:

http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp_home/index.en.aspx?issue=064), 372, 374-5.

15 Jebb, Plea, 5-7. On the prolonged negotiations for excavation at Olympia, its early years and connection

with the opening of the DAI in Athens, see S.L. Marchand, Down from Olympus. Archaeology and Philhellenism

in German, 1750-1970 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996), 77-91. On the great EfA campaigns,

see C. Valenti, L’École française d’Athènes (Paris, Belon, 2006), chapter 5.

16 Gill, Sifting, chapter 1.

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relationships at the highest level in Britain and Greece. The patronage of the Prince of Wales,

secured in time for the 1883 appeal launch, was of great importance not only in Britain but also

in Greece, since Alexandra, Princess of Wales, was the sister of George I of the Hellenes.17

Equally important was Charilaos Trikoupis‟ support in securing the land grant, formalized by act

of the Hellenic Parliament in 1884, which effectively defined the physical character of the School

in Greece18 and ended any serious suggestion of a shared arrangement with another nation (a

British section in the French School had been proposed to the Council of the Society for the

Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1882, when Jebb revived the subject of creating a British

School at Athens, attracting his fierce opposition).19

The story of the School‟s foundation has often been told.20 It began in 1878 with discussion

of the desirability of a British Institution in an opinion piece in Fraser’s Magazine by William

Wolfe Capes of Oxford,21 and Richard Jebb‟s letter to the Times of 18th September and his

follow-up article in the Contemporary Review. As Professor of Greek in Glasgow, Jebb had travelled

widely in Greece and made a study of the French, German (and later American) Schools. His

promotion of the idea of a British School reflected both nationalist concern that British

scholarship should not lag behind, and his personal belief in the proper place of Greece itself in

Hellenic studies.22 The initial suggestion was not immediately followed up. Indeed, the

foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1879, while in some quarters

17 A point noted by Macmillan in a letter to Jebb of 22nd February 1883, quoted by M. Beard and C. Stray,

„The academy abroad: the nineteenth-century origin of the British School at Athens‟, in M. Daunton (ed.),

The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), 378.

18 ΦΕΚ 208 (1884) 1058, also ΦΕΚ 202 (1886) 1312-13.

19 C. Jebb, Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (1907, reprinted with an introduction by R.B. Todd,

Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 2002), 244-9; Jebb, Plea, 16; Stray Sophocles’ Jebb, cat.105. In later years, a letter of

9th March 1895 from Charles Waldstein to Jebb refers to a suggestion made by Princess Frederick to the

Prince of Wales that in view of financial hardship, the British and American Schools should merge: Stray,

Sophocles’ Jebb, cat. 207. This suggestion was particularly poorly timed as it coincided with the School‟s own

request that the Prince support a renewed appeal for funds. Diplomacy was required to quash the idea, but

with the School already in existence, the threat cannot have been so very strong.

20 See e.g. G. Macmillan, „A short history of the British School at Athens, 1886-1911‟, BSA 17 (1910-11),

ix-x; H. Waterhouse, The British School at Athens. The First Hundred Years (London, British School at Athens,

1986), 6-9; A. Kakissis, „Frederick Hasluck and the British School at Athens before World War One‟, in

Shankland, Hasluck, 205-12; L. Potter and J. Whitley, „The origins of the British School at Athens‟, in E.

Calligas and J. Whitley (eds), On Site. British Archaeologists in Greece (Athens, Motibo, 2005), 11-23; Gill,

Sifting, 12-29.

21 W.W. Capes, „„L‟École française‟ at Athens and at Rome‟, Fraser’s Magazine 103 (1878), 103-12.

22 Jebb, Life and Letters, xi, xiv-xv (R.B. Todd).

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perceived as the obvious means of developing the proposal,23 instead created a further forum for

diverse opinions and personal and institutional rivalries.24 But the impetus was not lost, and once

Jebb and his associates succeeding in securing royal support (from the Duke of Albany as well as

the Prince of Wales),25 all parties acted in consort. An appeal for funds was launched in 1883,26

and rapidly achieved the goal of appointing a Director, the architect Francis Penrose famed for

his studies of the Parthenon, and of building (to Penrose‟s own design) what is now the Upper

House, officially opened in 1886. The School‟s initial manifesto was clear. It was to provide a

base in Athens for the work of visiting scholars, with a house, library and resident director who

could provide advice. It was not exclusively for archaeology, but should serve more widely to

sustain Greek studies in Greek lands. It was open to people accredited by universities, and where

possible also to travellers staying for shorter periods.27

The key role of the Universities in the foundation and subsequent support of the School has

often been emphasized. Yet this should be nuanced. Oxford and Cambridge were supportive, but

most other institutions to which the School appealed declared themselves unable to subscribe

either for constitutional reasons or for want of funds.28 The British School did not, therefore,

enjoy the relatively broad and expanding base of university subscription which sustained the

American School of Classical Studies. The major donors to the initial appeal for funds to create

the School (i.e. those giving over £100) were, with the exception of Jane Harrison, public figures

23 E.g. letter from Pollock to Jebb, 5/12/1882, in response to Jebb‟s proposal for a British institute: BSA

Archive, corporate correspondence.

24 On the equivocal support of Charles Newton, see: Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cat. 109; letter S. Colvin to Jebb,

15/4/1883, BSA Archive, corporate correspondence. On alternative proposals for a French partnership,

and the SPHS Council‟s lack of appetite for discussion of broad appeals for a School: Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb,

cats 105, 106. On Macmillan‟s support for the project and Jebb‟s distrust of his motives (due largely to

Macmillan‟s support of Mahaffy): BSA Archive, corporate correspondence, letters from Macmillan to Jebb,

22/2/1883, 15/10/1886, 3/12/1886; Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cats 128, 142.

25 Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cat.111.

26 Jebb, Plea.

27 Jebb, Plea, 8-9. The first School rules and regulations (Report of the Executive Committee 1887-88 and of the

Meeting of Subscribers, July 18th 1888, 12-13) and the Statutes drafted in 1894-5 and published in BSA 1 (1894-

5), 118-20, both embody this initial aim. For a study of such a generalist traveller/School supporter, see

M.C. Chatziioannou, „Like a rolling stone, R.A.H. Bickford-Smith (1859-1916) from Britain to Greece‟, in

M. Llewellyn Smith, P. Kitromilides and E. Calligas (eds), Scholars, Travels, Archives. Greek History and Culture

through the British School at Athens (London, British School at Athens, 2009), 39-48.

28 British School at Athens. Report of the Executive Committee 1886, 6-7. In a letter of 3rd February 1883 to Jebb,

responding to his renewed plea for a British School, William Gladstone had remarked that „I should have

thought that more might be expected, than your paper contemplates, from the official action, so to call it,

of the Universities, in respect both of authority, and of funds‟: Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cat. 107. Jebb‟s

assessment proved realistic.

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outside the university world (including the Marquis of Bute, Pantelis Rallis, the Earl of Rosebery,

Charles Waring and Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild). Thereafter, until the receipt of the first

government grant in 1895, the Hellenic Society and the University of Oxford were the only

institutions to pledge annual subscriptions. The balance of the School‟s income was made up of

donations from many individual members of the universities, but in a personal capacity. 29 The

University of Cambridge first contributed via a different route upon the appointment of Ernest

Gardner to the directorship in 1887, since his Craven Studentship effective subsidized his salary

to the tune of £200 per year for the first two years of his appointment.30 Cambridge students too

were admitted in increasing numbers, usually with their own funding. In straightforward

financial terms, it is clear that the School was kept in operation principally by the support of

individuals and the Hellenic Society, with the only consistent university support coming from

Oxford. But this is only a part of the picture. The intellectual impetus for the School‟s academic

development, important personal financial and political support, and the engagement of students

draws Cambridge in particular more fully into the frame.

In 1879, Cambridge reformed the Classical Tripos to give archaeology a place in Part II.31 The

British School‟s foundation therefore held the promise of a virtuous circle whereby the School

promoted re-defined concepts of Hellenism in the old universities and the universities sent a

steady stream of students to Athens. In practice, however, the nature of Classics as a discipline,

and the role of Greek material culture (and particularly archaeology) within it, was highly

contested.32 Unlike the American School of Classical Studies, which was founded by a

consortium of American universities (initially nine, rising to twelve by the first year of operation)

in collaboration with leading businessmen, and which fulfilled clearer, university-defined

requirements to teach ancient Greek literature and history as well as archaeology,33 the British

29 British School at Athens. Report of the Executive Committee 1886, 7, 10-12. Reports for the years immediately

following present a similar picture.

30 British School at Athens. Report of the Executive Committee 1887-88 and of the Meeting of Subscribers, July 18th 1888,

6; the first direct Cambridge University grant, of £100, was received in 1896.

31 M. Beard, „The invention (and re-invention) of „Group D‟: an archaeology of the Classical Tripos, 1879-

1984‟, in C. Stray (ed.), Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge. Curriculum, Culture and Community

(Cambridge, Cambridge Philological Society, 1999), 113-23; C. Stray, „Renegotiating Classics: the politics of

curricular reform in late-Victorian Cambridge‟, Echoes du monde classique/Classical Views 42 (ns 17) (1998),

449-70.

32 Beard and Stray, Academy Abroad, 371-87.

33 L.E. Lord, A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1882-1942: an Intercollegiate Project

(Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1947), chapter 1. The contrast with the BSA‟s engagement

with British universities, while marked, was nonetheless one of degree rather than kind. As Lord‟s account

makes clear, while the ASCSA was closer to a wider range of universities, it was not universally welcomed

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School was precisely placed in disputed territory. Was archaeology a discipline, and if so should it

be aligned more with Classical art history or the natural sciences (as was prehistory, which in

Britain had developed hand in hand with geology);34 was technical specialization or generalization

more desirable; what was the teaching role of the School to be? The School early on established

the custom of inviting a distinguished member of the intellectual elite to preside over and address

its Annual General Meeting of Subscribers. Since the content and tone of these addresses were

probably beyond the School‟s control, the texts published more or less in full in the School‟s

annual reports are more revealing of wider attitudes to Classics, archaeology, and the role of the

School in relation to them, than the more straightforwardly positive views of the School‟s

officers and closest supporters. At the 1899 meeting, the Warden of All Souls, Sir William

Anson, mourned the passing of the pure Classics (i.e. linguistic scholarship), remarking that: „the

material on which a man has … been educated has so far become a part of himself that it affords

an illustration, a resource, a consolation, in the ups and downs of an eventful career. I do not

think that this particular educational quality can be claimed for Classical archaeology, or that in a

crisis of life, a man would find strength or consolation in reminiscences of the exploration of a

Mycenaean building‟.35

With hindsight, it is not clear that the School was the logical agent to lead British Classical

archaeology at least during the first fifteen years of operation. It was not, as the École française

d‟Athènes, a government foundation charged with teaching and field research, nor was it funded

and equipped to run large excavations like the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (indeed, its

financial situation in 1894 prevented it from conducting any excavation in Greece).36 Popular

appetite for Classical archaeology is plain both from the British press and the strong material

emphasis in the work conducted and published by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic

Studies, founded in 1879. Of the 27 articles published in the Society‟s Journal of Hellenic Studies for

1885, immediately before the British School opened, only three were purely literary: the rest

ranged from excavation and travel reports (Flinders Petrie on Naukratis, Theodore Bent on the

Cyclades), to studies of art and manufacture, and what was termed philology (in fact the primary

(the lack of enthusiasm of President Barnard of Columbia was cleverly satirized in The New York Times of

31 March, 1882: Lord, 8-10; Beard and Stray, Academy Abroad, 371-2).

34 G. Daniel, A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology (London, Duckworth, 1975), chapter 3; on the

intellectual background, see M. Freeman, Victorians and the Prehistoric (New Haven/London, Yale University

Press, 2004).

35 „Report on the Annual Meeting of Subscribers, 1899‟, BSA 5 (1898-9), 105.

36 EfA: Valenti, L’École française d’Athènes, chapters 3 and 4 discusses the revitalization of the School from

the beginning of the Third Republic. On the activities of the DAI, see Jantzen, Einhundert Jahre, 19-31.

Marchand, Down from Olympus, 99-103 rightly emphazises the importance of Alexander Conze‟s

appointment as General Secretary of the DAI in 1881 in professionalising the Institute and ensuring

funding for „big archaeology‟.

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study of inscriptions).37 The Society (still a young institution) had fully grasped what was widely

popular and was eager to maintain its hold: even the compilation of its annual report on

Archaeology in Greece, while largely undertaken by British School directors was not their exclusive

preserve (Jane Harrison compiled the report published in 1888 and G.C. Richards that in 1898).38

Indeed, while acknowledging the vital financial contribution made to the School by the Society

from the beginning (both via its subscription and in support for research), it is fair to note that

the Society‟s Council was initially equivocal about the merits of an independent British

establishment in Greece, and in time concerned about potential competition for JHS from the

School‟s own Annual (established in 1895).39

The School under its first two directors, the architect and antiquarian Francis Penrose and the

numismatist and expert in sculpture Ernest Gardner, was a facilitator, not a leader. The School‟s

own fieldwork was initially slight and in the case of the theatre at Megalopolis, publicly criticized

notably by Wilhelm Dörpfeld (here the accusation of premature publication of faulty

interpretation and undocumented supposition, and the ensuing public argument, was probably

more damaging than any lingering flaws in the final publication).40 David Hogarth, the first

37 Report of the Managing Committee for the Session 1893-94 and of the Annual Meeting of Subscribers, July 11th, 1894,

6, acknowledges the renewal of the Hellenic Society‟s grant to the School, while noting the value provided

by the School in providing large bodies of archaeological research for publication in JHS. Waterhouse,

History, 61-3 reviews the publishing relationship between the School and the Society (see also n.39 here

below). The Society‟s commitment to funding, publishing and facilitating archaeology and travel in Greek

and Ottoman lands is plain from the correspondence of its Honorary Secretary: R. Doyle, „The Society for

the Promotion of Hellenic Studies archive of George A. Macmillan‟s personal papers‟, Archaeological Reports

56 (2009-10), 203-18. Gardner, in a letter to Jebb of 5/12/1881 (Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cat.85) noted with no

evident concern that „people grumble at us as too archaeological‟.

38 Annual accounts of archaeology in Greece were published in JHS throughout the period in question,

with the sole exception of 1897. The School began to publish its own Annual in 1895, but archaeological

reviews of this kind appeared only in the first two volumes (written by Ernest Gardner and his successor,

Cecil Harcourt Smith, respectively).

39 See n.24 here above. G.A. Macmillan, A History of the Hellenic Society, 1879-1929 (London, Society for the

Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 1929), vii-xiv. For a brief period from December 1897 to March 1898, the

subject of joint editorship or joint publication of the two journals appears to have been discussed; BSA

Archive, Letter Book 1 Nov 1897 – Aug 1900, letters from Loring to Hogarth, 9-12, 31-2, 54-5.

40 For a summary of Dörpfeld‟s objections followed by a joint statement, see The Classical Review 5 (1891),

238-240, 284-5. Gardner‟s report to the Annual Meeting of Subscribers in 1891 gives further background:

Report of the Managing Committee for the Session 1890-91 and of the Annual Meeting of Subscribers, July 3rd, 1891, 10-

14. The final publication (E.A. Gardner, W. Loring, G.C. Richards and W.J. Woodhouse, Excavations at

Megalopolis 1890-1891 [London, Macmillan, 1892], published by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic

Studies) warmly acknowledges Dörpfeld‟s advice (p. vi) although significant differences clearly remained

(see especially pp.80-96). On the role played by the School‟s first woman student, Eugénie Sellers, see n.52

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professional field archaeologist to hold the directorship (1897-1900), had been a student at the

School in 1887 because he had won an Oxford travel scholarship and was required to undertake

preliminary study in Athens in order to be taken on as apprentice to the traveller William Martin

Ramsay, a specialist in Asia Minor. He had no prior archaeological experience, and by his own

account gained little while at the School, even from digging at Paphos.41 A turning point for the

School came with the directorship of Cecil Harcourt Smith, seconded from the British Museum

in 1895-7. Benefitting from the financial stability offered by the first government grant and

renewed public subscription, Smith established a research programme, selecting Melos for the

first large-scale School excavations, establishing the BSA Annual, and setting out a vision for

collaboration with the foreign Schools and the Archaeological Service.42 This step towards an

independent profile increased friction with the traditionalists, but what then followed was an

irrevocable change.

The first serious BSA attempt to excavate at Knossos, made by J.L. Myres in 1893, failed

primarily because Federico Halbherr‟s interests were protected locally. Myres then moved to

work on Cyprus.43 The involvement of Arthur Evans was of a quite different order. A

philologist, but primarily engaged with the intellectually distinct prehistoric tradition, sufficiently

wealthy to purchase the palace site himself, and with a combination of determination and fine

political timing, Evans penetrated where even Schliemann had failed.44 But he relied upon the

School to smooth diplomatic relations, raise funds, and provide expert staff, and in turn he

accepted a parallel BSA excavation and Hogarth‟s higher standards of fieldwork.45 The result was

here below. The warning in a letter from Loring to Hogath of 29.12.1897 that Cecil Harcourt Smith should

be careful of premature publication of the School‟s new excavation on Melos likely reflects a lesson

learned: BSA Archive, Letter Book 1 Nov 1897 – Aug 1900, 20.

41 D.G. Hogarth, Accidents of an Antiquaries’ Life (London, Macmillan, 1910), 3.

42 Waterhouse, History, 11-14, 55-6; „Report of the Director for the session 1895-6‟, BSA 2 (1895-6), 16-26;

„Report of the Director for the session 1896-7‟, BSA 3 (1896-7), 228-34.

43 A Brown, „‟I propose to Begin at Gnossos‟. John Myres‟ visit to Crete in 1893‟, BSA 81 (1986), 37-44;

Morgan, Halbherr, 57.

44 Morgan, Halbherr, 58-62; M. Panagiotaki, „Knossos and Evans. Buying Kephala‟, in G. Cadogan, E.

Hatzaki and A. Vasilakis (eds), Knossos. Palace, City, State (London, British School at Athens, 2004), 513-30.

A. Brown and K. Bennett, Arthur Evans’ Travels in Crete 1894-1899 (Oxford, Archaeopress, 2001) presents

the correspondence covering the long period of negotiation and preparation.

45 J. Evans, Time and Chance. The Story of Arthur Evans and his Forebears (London 1943) 323, 340-1, 349;

Brown and Bennett, Arthur Evans’ Travels, 269-70, 296-304. Hogarth‟s interventions in Evans‟ team

principally concerned the appointment of Duncan Mackenzie and Theodore Fyfe as field director and

architect respectively: N. Momigliano, Duncan Mackenzie. A Cautious, Canny Highlander and the Palace of Minos

at Knossos (London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1999), 38-70; P. Soar, Theodore Fyfe Architect, 1875-1945

(private publication, 2009), 49-66.

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the School‟s first partnership. The Cretan Exploration Fund was opened in 1899 under the joint

management of Evans and Hogarth. As the record of the Annual Meeting of Subscribers (30th

October 1899) states: „By the efforts of Mr Evans, acting in conjunction with the Director, a

series of sites …. has been secured for British enterprise‟: Knossos, Praesos, Lyttos, and the

Dictaean Cave were „reserved for the Cretan Fund‟.46 Evans completed the acquisition of the

palace site early in 1900: Hogarth began to dig the cemeteries for the School on 13th March, and

Evans himself began to dig on 23rd March. All of the School‟s excavation funds were devoted to

Crete, and our commitment to prehistory over Classical archaeology confirmed. Knossos thus

joined the roster of great excavations across the British Empire which transformed world

prehistory.47

A parallel story develops from changes in public engagement with Greece. Easier access for

middle class travellers in the last decades of the nineteenth century gave rise to a corpus of

narrative writing, poetry, photographs and drawings, and, to a lesser degree, scientific

descriptions, showing a particular interest in the reality of contemporary Greece and its people.48

As a subscription organization, the School had to respond to these interests whether or not they

were university concerns. The allure of ancient Greek for Victorian women, traditionally denied a

formal classical education, is well documented, as is their use of the Classics to destabilise

traditional gender roles, but there is a more specific connection in the work of a group of women

novelists and translators active from around 1866 onwards, who were extremely well informed

about modern Greek affairs.49 Women were admitted to the School as students from the 1890-91

session onwards, although even after the construction of the School‟s hostel in 1895-6 they were

not allowed into residence until 1920. Undoubtedly, strong figures like Jane Harrison, who

travelled frequently to Greece, were an inspiration (while a generous supporter of the British

School and of the rights of women within it, Harrison was never admitted as a student).50

Furthermore, the archaeological and broader cultural options within the Oxford and especially

46 „Annual Meeting of Subscribers‟, BSA 5 (1898-9), 102.

47 Daniel, 150 Years, chapter 6 (noting the background delineated in chapter 5).

48 R. Eisner, Travelers to an Antique Land (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1991), chapter 5; J.

Pemble, The Mediterranean Passion. Victorians and Edwardians in the South (New York, Oxford University Press,

1987), 60-84.

49 S. Fiske, Heretical Hellenism: Women Writers, Ancient Greece, and the Victorian Popular Imagination (Athens

Ohio, Ohio State University Press, 2008); S. Assinder, Greece in British Women's Writing, 1866-1915, PhD

thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013; S. Assinder, „To say the same thing in different words‟: politics and

poetics in late Victorian translation from modern Greek‟, Journal of International Women's Studies 13(6) (2012),

72-84.

50 A. Robinson, The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), chapters

4 and 5; M. Beard, The Invention of Jane Harrison (Cambridge Mass./London, Harvard University Press,

2000), chapters 5 and 8; Fiske, Heretical Hellenism, chapter 4.

11

the Cambridge curricula were attractive to women students who had not received the same

rigorous secondary education in ancient languages as their male counterparts.51 Yet the financial

demands imposed by the lack of residential facilities at the School may help to explain why so

few women were admitted at least in the early years: Eugénie Sellers was the first to be admitted

in 1890-91 (before the hostel was built, although she remained in Athens through the period

under consideration),52 followed by Caroline Hutton in 1896-7 and Olivia Köhler in 1899-1900,

all three from Girton College, Cambridge. There is little doubt that the female students of the

School were left to work with few academic constraints (apart from a ban on participating in

excavations), but they were few in comparison with the numbers travelling in Greece and indeed

with the numbers of female subscribers listed annually from the foundation of the School

onwards. The flow increased somewhat after 1900, but was still not large.53 In the early years,

therefore, women supported the School financially but in practice made greater use of it via the

shorter or less formal associations only occasionally noted in annual reports. Thus in 1895-6 Miss

Dabis of Holloway College and Miss Paterson are noted as pursuing archaeological studies in

Athens, and in 1900-1901, Miss Crum as studying for part II of the Cambridge Tripos.54 Here

Greek women students were perhaps better placed to benefit from the School than their British

counterparts (Eleni Triantaphyllides, for example, a graduate of the Arsakeion in Athens,

published an article on Macedonian folklore in BSA 3, 1896-7).

Travellers also began to challenge established Classical itineraries by incorporating medieval

and later monuments - refashioning the past to fit the culture interests of contemporary society.

Byzantine monuments played a prominent role in negotiating between antiquity, the Middle Ages

and modernity, as well as between east and west.55 This connection with Byzantium worked on a

more formal academic level too, but again, outside the universities.

51 C. Breay, „Women and the Classical Tripos 1869-1914‟, in Stray, Classics in 19th and 20th Century Cambridge,

49-70; Stray, Renegotiating, 456-65.

52 On Sellers‟ background and interests, with comment on her role in the affair of the Megalopolis

excavation, see Beard, Invention, 18-23, 31-33, 67-69. Athens was a notoriously expensive city in which to

find satisfactory lodgings: in 1897, the cost of lodging at the BSA was 40 drachmae per week (BSA

Archive, Letter Book 1 Nov 1897 – Aug 1900, 9-12).

53 Gill, Sifting, chapter 5, outlines the broader background and lists those students subsequently admitted.

54 This was Jessie Crum, a Newnham undergraduate brought to Greece by Jane Harrison for a three week

tour at the end of her second year (described in detail in her journal). Following this experience, she

specialized in archaeology for part II and became the first Newnham student to be awarded first class

honours in the Classical Tripos: C. Stray, „Digs and degrees: Jessie Crum‟s tour of Greece, Easter 1901‟,

Classics Ireland 2 (1995), 121-31.

55 A classic statement is C. Mango, „Byzantinism and romantic Hellenism‟, Journal of the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965), 29-43; fuller and more recent appraisals include papers in D. Ricks and P.

12

In January 1888, two young students of the Royal Academy of Arts, Robert Weir Schultz and

Sidney Barnsley, visited Greece to study Byzantine architecture.56 Within two years, they had

produced hundreds of highly detailed records – the foundation of the Byzantine Research Fund

Archive which is now one of the treasures of the British School. There followed a series of

architects (including Ramsay Traquair, Walter George and William Harvey) sent out to Italy,

Greece, Turkey and the Near East to study the architecture of these periods in context, and to

bring back what they had observed into their later practices. Their guiding influence was the Arts

and Crafts movement which played such a significant part in the Gothic and Byzantine revivals

in Britain in the late 1880s. Strong influence was exerted by Richard Norman Shaw, and

especially his chief assistant, William Richard Lethaby, who had travelled across the Near East

recording monuments, was a personal friend of the Arts and Crafts pioneers William Morris and

Philip Webb, and was one of the founding members of the Art Workers‟ Guild. Byzantine art

and architecture meshed exactly with the philosophies of these movements. It represented

simplicity, unity of design and function, and integrity in the handling of materials. Combined

with the fact that many scholars saw Byzantium as the most tangible remnant of the continuity

between Classical and Modern Greece, it is hardly surprising that interest in it grew steadily.

The close relationship between the architects of the Arts and Crafts movement and the

British School at Athens created the near perfect environment for a rich discourse between

architects, archaeologists, and historians. The majority of the records in the BRF Archive were

essentially created by a very few architects with assistance from their fellow students at the

School. And the great patron of BRF architects, Edwin Freshfield (lawyer to many influential

Greek clients, Pantelis Rallis included, a landowner in Smyrna, and one of a circle instrumental in

ensuring the influence of this work across the empire)57 also became a trustee of the School in

1891. And yet this extraordinary achievement eluded the Classical establishment. The School‟s

1897 manifesto claims that „other nations have been able to carry out the researches in Olympia,

Delos, and elsewhere which quite throw into the shade any similar work done by Englishmen

Magdalino (eds), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1998), notably those by Politis,

Huxley and Kitromilides; Hamilakis, The Nation, 112-19.

56 A.G. Kakissis, „The Byzantine Research Fund archive: encounters of Arts and Crafts architects in

Byzantium‟, in Llewellyn Smith, Kitromilides and Calligas, Scholars, Travels, Archives, 125-44; D. Kotoula

with A.G. Kakissis, „Recording Byzantine mosaics in 19th-century Greece: the case of the Byzantine

Research Fund (BRF) archive‟, in C. Entwistle and L. James (eds), New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on

Byzantine Glass and Mosaics (London, British Museum, 2013 forthcoming); D. Kotoula, „Arts and Crafts and

the “Byzantine”: the Greek connection‟, in R. Betancourt and M. Taroutina (eds), Byzantium/Modernism

(New Haven, Yale University Press, forthcoming). The broader Greek context is mapped by M.

Greensted, The Arts and Crafts Movement: Exchanges between Greece and Britain (1876-1930) (unpublished MPhil

thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010), noting discussion of Schultz and Barnsley in chapters 3 and 4.

57 J. Slinn, A History of Freshfields (London, Freshfields, 1984), 129-32;

13

since Sir C.T. Newton‟s famous researches at Halicarnassus thirty years ago‟. In fairness, this

relegation of Byzantium was typical of most foreign Schools at that time:58 the major exception

was the Russian Institute in Constantinople which was Byzantine in focus, promoted

connections within the Orthodox world, and worked extensively across northern Greece, to the

extent that appeals for a branch in Athens were dismissed as irrelevant.59

In conclusion, within its first fifteen years of existence, the School managed to capitalize

intellectually upon different traditions in prehistory and art history which, while generally

peripheral to the Classical vision of its founders, were at the forefront of international

scholarship. The impulse behind the foundation of the School, focused in the Classical world,

was both a powerful lever for support and an intellectual weakness, not least since, with the

major exception of post-prehistoric Sparta, the School failed to secure the large Classical

excavation which could form a bridge with literary studies in the universities. Success breeds

success, so Knossos and Phylakopi continued as models for large prehistoric excavations and

regional campaigns, usually funded by donors or public subscription (Palaikastro, Laconia,

Thessaly and then Thermi, to name but a few).60

It is always hard to determine what is accident and what design, yet the peculiar conjunction

of circumstances which surrounded the School‟s foundation and its first years quickly helped to

realise Jebb‟s vision that „the British school ought not to be exclusively a school for specialists,

but also, in the most comprehensive sense, a school of Greek studies in Greek lands‟.61 Jebb was

equally realistic in his belief that „the first thing which must be clearly understood is, that no

assistance whatsoever can be expected from government.‟62 The government grant of ₤500

which was finally made in response to a further appeal in 1895 was small, but it marked a turning

point in securing the School‟s survival.63 However, the 1898 AGM address by the Bishop of

London, Frederick Temple (the former headmaster of Rugby School) is more typical, if perhaps

unusually colourful, in its praise of the private enterprise that gave the School a spirit that

government control would stifle, since a limited budget „encourages vitality and a deeper

impression on the public mind‟. In praising the achievements of the School in the face of

58 Compare J-M. Spieser, „Les études byzantines à l‟École française d‟Athènes‟, BCH 120 (1996), 441-9.

59 K. Papoulides, Το Ρωσικό Αρχαιολογικό Ινστιτόυτο Κωνσταντινουπόλεως (1894-1914) (Thessaloniki, Institute

for Balkan Studies, 1987), chapter 2.

60 Macmillan, Short history, xiv-xvi, xix-xxvi.

61 Jebb, Plea, 8.

62 Jebb, Plea, 11. While this rhetoric was undoubtedly designed to encourage contributions, certain

responses to the 1883 Plea (as that of Gladstone; Stray, Sophocles’ Jebb, cat. 107) must have reinforced this

belief.

63 „Annual Meeting of Subscribers‟, BSA 2 (1895-6), 9, 12-13; „Annual Meeting of Subscribers‟, BSA 3

(1896-7), 225, 227-8.

14

financial challenges, Temple concluded that „Englishmen in a word were like Saul, the son of

Kish, who went out to look for his father‟s asses and found a kingdom‟.64

64 „Annual Meeting of Subscribers‟, BSA 4 (1897-8), 106.