Ben Cunnington (archaeologist)

Edward Benjamin Howard Cunnington (1861–1950), was a British archaeologist most famous for his work on prehistoric Wiltshire. He was the great grandson of the famous antiquarian William Cunnington and the fourth generation of his family to work recording and preserving Wiltshire's past.

The son of Henry Cunnington, a wine merchant, Benjamin was a journalist before joining his father's business. He was also for sixty years also the unpaid honorary curator of Devizes Museum. In 1889 he married Maud Pegge and the two devoted their lives to archaeology. They had one son, Edward, who was killed in the First World War.

The Cunningtons carried out excavations at some of the most important sites in British archaeology. These included the first known Neolithic causewayed enclosure at Knap Hil, the Iron Age village at All Cannings Cross, West Kennet Long Barrow, Woodhenge, (which they named) and The Sanctuary. This last monument they rediscovered as it had been lost since William Stukeley saw it in the eighteenth century. Woodhenge and The Sanctuary were bought by the Cunningtons and given to the nation.

He died a few months before his wife, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Sources

• Rundle, P ‘'Cunnington , Maud Edith (1869-1951)’', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 23 September 2005