Leslie R. H. Willis

Leslie R. H. Willis (13 July 1908 – 12 March 1984) was an English mechanical and electrical engineer and archaeologist, who excavated the Iron Age settlement at the hamlet of Dainton, at Ipplepen, Teignbridge, Devon in the late 1940s.

For the DC Comics character named Leslie Willis, see Livewire (DC Comics).

The son of William Willis, J.P., a timber merchant and farmer, formerly a mounted police officer and inspector for the Fisheries Commission, Willis was brought up at St John's Wood, Marylebone, and educated at the Mercers' School, then the University of London and Faraday House Electrical Engineering College (at which he would later lecture). He served in the Royal Artillery and, during the Second World War, with the R.A.F. in India. His uncle was Frederick Smythe Willis, an accountant (a founder member and first hon. treasurer of the Corporation of Accountants of Australia) and Mayor of Willoughby, New South Wales, the Willises- a wealthy farming family- having settled in New Zealand in the late 1800s; he was a descendant of the colonial judge John Walpole Willis (and so a relative of his elder brother, William Downes Willis, a clergyman and theologian). His mother was the aunt of T. M. Wilkes, head of New Zealand's civil aviation in the 1930s and 1940s.[1][2]

Willis spent his career working as an engineer (being a Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and an associate member of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders)[3][4] particularly in the field of tribology, including at a laboratory in North London until his retirement.[5]

In the late 1940s, he had participated in the archaeological dig at Dainton, Devon, where E. H. Rogers (who excavated the pre-Bronze Age Yelland Stone Rows near the village of Yelland in Devon in the 1930s)[6][7][8] had discovered what proved to be an Early Iron Age farming settlement. Willis was in charge of the excavation on behalf of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society; the initial phase took three weeks in August 1949, centred on Dainton Common.[9] The site comprised two enclosures, outside which were situated several mounds.[10] Rogers and Willis subsequently produced reports on the layout of the buildings discovered, and the items found there (including, for example, the presence of haematite ware amongst the pottery, and that ceremonial metalworking debris was found).[11] The materials were placed in museums at Exeter and Torquay.[12][13][14][15][16][17]

Willis was a member of the Museums Association from 1946,[18] and of the Prehistoric Society from 1947.[19] He was amongst those invited to attend the 19th International Geological Congress at Algiers in 1952.[20] He married the youngest daughter of a London building contractor, and had two sons. He died in 1984 of complications from pneumonia, survived by his sons, grandsons, and his elder brother Sidney Willis, MVO, of The Old Rectory, Havering, a civil servant.[21][22]

References
  1. Engineering Monthly Notes, vol. 23, no. 2, 1985, pg 33
  2. Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vol. 116, 1985, pg 260
  3. The Chartered Mechanical Engineer vol. 5 and 6, 1958, pg 229
  4. Transactions of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, Volume 79, 1963, pg 6
  5. Transactions of the North East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders, Volume 101, 1985, pg 16
  6. Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society, vol. 1, part 4, 1932, pp. 201-202, "The Yelland Stone Row", E. H. Rogers
  7. Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society, vol. 3, part 3, 1946, pp. 121-127, "The Raised Beach, Submerged Forest and Kitchen Midden of Westward Ho and the Submerged Stone Row of Yelland", E. H. Rogers
  8. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV5507&resourceID=104
  9. Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vol. 82 and 83, 1950, pg 193
  10. Heritage Gateway, 'Probable Prehistoric field system at Dainton Hill', URL:http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV8713&resourceID=104 accessed 18 September 2017
  11. Bronze Age Metalworking in the Netherlands (c. 2000- 800 B.C.): A research into the preservation of metallurgy-related artefacts and the social position of the smith, M. H. G. Kuipers, Sidestone Press, 2008, pg 62
  12. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, vol. 20, issue 1, Jul. 1955, pp. 87-102
  13. Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vol. 82 and 83, 1950, pp 105, 193
  14. The Archaeological Journal, vol. 114, 1957, 'Report of the Summer Meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute at Exeter in 1957', pg 126-184
  15. The Archaeological News Letter, vol. 1-3, 1948, pg 148
  16. Cornish Archaeology, no. 4, 1965, pg 9
  17. Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland, and Wales from the Seventh Century B.C. until the Roman Conquest, Barry Cunliffe, Routledge, 2003
  18. The Museums Journal, vol. 49, Dulau & Co. Ltd, 1949, p. 270
  19. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, vol. 31, University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1965, p. 413
  20. Liste des géologues du monde: invités à assister au XIXe Congrés géologique international, vol. 19, Protats frères, 1952, p. 279
  21. Engineering Monthly Notes, vol. 23, no. 2, 1985, pg 33
  22. Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vol. 116, 1985, pg 260
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