No one messes with: ‘The Management!’
Ian Blair
The photo below shows Brian Hobley (Chief Urban Archaeologist) and senior DUA staff in 1978 and featured in ‘The City of London Archaeological Trust Appeal’ booklet, launched in an endeavour to raise extra funds for archaeology in the City.
I do not think that it raised an awful lot of money from rich City benefactors in the early days, but I do recall that the fundraising efforts were led by a mysterious figure known only as the ‘Wing Commander’ (I kid you not!), who I believe operated out of an upstairs room at Basinghall Street, over the DUA offices. It could of course be that the Wing Commander was in fact the alter-ego of Brian Hobley or John Schofield as, like Clarke Kent and Superman, they were never seen in the same room together.
The names of the DUA senior staff from the back and in rough rows from left to right:
Mike Rhodes, Philip Armitage, Tony Dyson, Peter Marsden, John Maloney, Alan Thompson, Dominic Perring, John Schofield, Clive Orton, Peter Boyd, Penny MacConnoran, and Brian Hobley.
Two of the original team also appear in the photo below taken a decade later in 1989, standing menacingly outside the DUA excavations office, in the lower rotunda in front of the Museum of London. Good to see that Hal Bishop is still sporting his ‘Blue Peter’ badge, which I assume is one of several acquired by archaeologists during filming at the Huggin Hill Roman baths at Dominant House (DMT88) in the same year.
From left to right: John Schofield, Sue Rivière, Simon O’Connor Thompson, John Maloney, Hal Bishop, Taryn Nixon, Eric Norton, and Rob Ellis, pictured in 1989 outside the DUA office in the lower rotunda in front of the Museum of London.
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