Ipswich Museum - The Curatorship of Guy Maynard, 1920-1952

The Curatorship of Guy Maynard, 1920-1952

Frank Woolnough was succeeded by Guy Maynard (1877-1966), previously of Saffron Walden Museum, who was curator from 1920 to 1953. Maynard was Secretary and Editor of the Prehistoric Society from 1921–1936, when this role was taken over by the Cambridge archaeologist Charles Phillips. Maynard and Reid Moir made a team interested in archaeology and developed this work strongly on behalf of the museum, excavating in various parts of Suffolk. Museum assistants Harold Spencer and Francis Simpson became specialised in geology and natural history from the 1920s, evolving a departmental structure for the museum through their work and publications with the Suffolk Naturalists' Society and the Ipswich and District Natural History Society. Reports of archaeological work went to the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology Proceedings, of which both Reid Moir and Maynard were officers.

Reid Moir succeeded Lankester as President until his death in 1944, and through international contacts developed representative collections of implements from most sites published by the Prehistoric Society. Although some of his theories and researches have since been abandoned he was held in high regard by many of his scientific contemporaries. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1937.

Guy Maynard continued Woolnough's work in the area of Fine and Applied Art and Local History assiduously. After the Gainsborough Centenary Exhibition of 1928 a strategy to develop collections showing the Suffolk context of the work of Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable was carried forward. Active in the Suffolk Preservation Society, Maynard rescued what he could from the disappearing timber structures of Ipswich, modernised the museum records, developed photographic records of Ipswich, maintained annual abstracts of archaeological work in the county, and enormously extended the collections of regional artefacts of all kinds.

After 1934 the Museum's work in practical archaeology became centred on the employment of Basil Brown (1888-1977), who with Mr Maynard first conducted three years' investigation of a Roman villa at Stanton Chair in Suffolk. The Museum was approached to release Brown for part of 1938 and 1939 to investigate the Sutton Hoo mounds for Mrs Pretty, under the museum's guidance. In the second year he made the astounding discovery of the ship and its treasure in Mound 1, at which point the national interest of the find led to the formation of an external team led by Charles Phillips.

During the War Guy Maynard had the responsibility of packing up the most valuable collections and transferring them into safe storage, and afterwards of reinstating them. On Reid Moir's death in 1944 he was succeeded as President by Sir Charles Sherrington. Basil Brown was re-employed until the 1960s and continued his work throughout the county, building the basis of the County's Sites and Monuments Record. This was latterly under the curatorship of Norman Smedley (1953-1964), who afterwards formalised the archaeological role for Miss Elizabeth Owles.