Obituary: James M. Gibson, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

351 OBITUARY james m. gibson, b.a., m.a., ph.d. Dr James Gibson died on 27 February 2018 at the age of 70. His career spanned a wide range of activities beginning as a university lecturer, undertaking very substantial and important original research to becoming a most accomplished historian and archivist for some of the oldest charitable organisations in his adopted home county of Kent. Colleagues, while easily recognizing Jim’s North American accent, were often unsure whether he hailed from Canada or the USA. The latter in fact, having been born in South Dakota. He obtained a b.a. in 1970 from Houghton College in Western New York; an m.a. in 1974 and his ph.d. in 1976 from the University of Pennsylvania. He lectured in English literature and writing at Houghton College before coming to Kent on a short sabbatical in 1984 to begin editing the Canterbury and Rochester diocesan volumes for the international research project Records of Early English Drama. The three volumes for the Canterbury diocese were eventually published in 2002 (and were reviewed in Archaeologia Cantiana cxxiv). It is thus very appropriate that this obituary is accompanied by an article in this volume by Dr Sweetinburgh on the New Romney Passion Play (see pp. 124- 36) which draws heavily from his seminal work. Having completed Canterbury REED volumes, he turned his attention to the drama records to be found in records from the Rochester diocese. Again, his research was meticulous and at the time of his death this work had been completed but not yet published. It is likely to become available on the REED website in due course. He decided to settle permanently in Kent and began working as part-time archivist for the Rochester Bridge Trust in 1987. He also joined the Kent Archaeological Society in that year. At the Trust he catalogued the bridge archive, created many exhibitions and helped write and edit the bridge history, published as Traffic and Politics: The construction and management of Rochester Bridge AD 43-1993, the first of the 10-volume Kent History Project (see review in Archaeologia Cantiana cxiv). He also catalogued the records and wrote the histories of the New College of Cobham and the Walthamstow Almshouse Charities. He served as part-time archivist for the Richard Watts and the City of Rochester Almshouse Charities and his work added greatly to knowledge of the lives of Richard Watts and Simon Potyn. An achievement of which Jim was particularly proud was the ‘City and Region’ Project. Led by Dr David Ormrod of the University of Kent, this examined historic rents in London and the South-East. The estate records in the Rochester Bridge Trust archive were analysed taking the raw data from account books and leases and then all the estate maps and building plans were digitised. 352 For the KAS Jim made two notable contributions to Archaeologia Cantiana which further demonstrate his wide range of interests. In cxii (1993) he analysed the 1566 survey of Kent ports and in cxxv (2005) published the findings of his work on the records of the Chantry College of Cobham. He was an energetic Secretary of the Publications Committee between 2002-2008 during which time he organised the preparation of the first digitised version of all the volumes of Archaeologia Cantiana on CD for sale to members. terry lawson OBITUARY