Colvin, Sir Howard - the man who excavated Dale Abbey

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Sir Howard Colvin was just 18 when he excavated the site around Dale Abbey, discovering numerous important artefacts. He went on to become an Oxford professor and respected architectural historian. His death, just after Christmas, prompted Maxwell Craven to pay this tribute to his remarkable life.

Respected historian Sir Howard Colvin, who excavated the Dale Abbey site

Dale Abbey is a wonderful, atmospheric and sequestered place, especially when one realises how close it is to the ever expanding bustle of Derby.

Some years ago, Derby Museum made two attempts, both of which failed, to incorporate the numerous artefacts excavated from the site in an archaeological excavation just prior to the Second World War, in 1938. These are laid out in a sort of shed beside the Abbey house and are rare, interesting and being where they are, exceedingly vulnerable.

That they are there at all, and that we understand the layout and surviving structures of the Abbey, is entirely due to that excavation, which was one of the earliest in the county to have been conducted upon the strictly disciplined lines to which today's excavations still conform.

The excavator, who stepped boldly into the shoes of the great Sir W H St John Hope, the previous man to excavate the site in 1882, was 18-year-old Howard Colvin, who had just left Trent College, where he was at school.

The dig seems to have been set up by his history master, who had allowed Howard to go out and about, looking at churches instead of playing games. He also seems to have been able to go into Derby regularly and buy history and architectural books – anything antiquarian really – from Frank Murray's stall on Derby Market.

Colvin went on to read history at University College London (UCL), returning there as a tutor in 1946, after serving in the RAF during the war. Later, he was appointed a Fellow of St John's, Oxford, where he remained until his death just after Christmas, aged 88.

He taught history, while himself becoming the greatest architectural historian of the second half of the 20th century, retiring as Fellow Emeritus in 1987. Strangely, Oxford has never run to a department of architectural history and Howard was never professor of a subject he made his own.

His two outstanding achievements were the editorship of the six volumes of the History of the King's Works – an account of all Royal buildings from the Middle Ages until the 19th century – and the epoch-making Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840. This first came out in 1954. He was working on the index of the 4th edition – by hand, for he never used a computer – when he died.

The dictionary is an indispensable work for anyone writing about buildings or patronage, and set the gold standard for any similar books in other disciplines in the quality and depth of the research.

He was knighted in 1995, mainly for years of committee work, especially with English Heritage and its forerunners.

Apart from those lucky enough to have been his students at Oxford, he was the mentor and guide to many who wrote architectural history and belonged to the Society of Architectural Historians, which he co-founded. In turn, all his followers, ex-students and acolytes sent him architectural information over the years which formed the backbone of the revised editions of his dictionary.

Colvin was a stickler for using source material in all cases where an architect was being connected with a building and for acknowledging the work of others. All of us whose research contributed to the dictionary were studiously acknowledged.

For me the references had to be even more precise, for he had learned his trade in Derbyshire and his earliest books were tomes like Glover's, Lysons' and Davies' histories of the county. He knew the sources backwards and would soon spot sloppy referencing.

The east window of the ruin photographed by Richard Keene, who is posing in the archway, in 1858-9

When he died, we were still arguing the toss over which Tapton House Hathersage-born Joseph Badger had designed. I had an entertaining letter from him, in his miniscule hand, only six weeks before his death.

Locally, he will be remembered by most as the man who researched Calke Abbey and made sense of the vast archive of material rescued from all parts of the house before it was passed to the Record Office. His excellent 1985 book on the house is still sold at the Abbey's shop.

For myself, though, I shall remember him best whenever I visit the Dale, with the Abbey's solitary east window arch still standing, a reminder of his remarkable achievement at 18!

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