CBRL has recently acquired images and records of Kathleen Kenyon’s photographs, drawings, notes and postcards, from North East Wales Archives in Flintshire, Wales.

Last year, CBRL was contacted by North East Wales Archives with records from the Kenyon family. They thought CBRL would be a better home for the archaeology-focused collection from Kathleen. CBRL’s Chair, John Shakeshaft, brought the collection from Wales to The British Academy in London, and has been assessing its contents there with Archives & Repository Manager Alice Lubbock.

The British Academy’s Archivist Sharon Messenger was consulted on appropriate archival housing, and, together with a graduate trainee from UCL, is cataloguing the collection as an initial training project. Alice digitised one of the two photo albums from the collection which include the below photos.

The archaeological site shown here is that of the Umayyad mosque and Roman ruins. The mosque and surrounding complex- a spacious courtyard with arcades, surrounded by columns, and containing a small fountain, were build in the late first century AD, close to the Roman ruins and using some of the stones from it.

These photos were probably taken in the 1930s, and the Umayyad mosque site was reconstructed and restored in the 1990s. We are hoping to digitise and analyse more of this collection in the coming months.