We were saddened to learn that Roger Neville Russ Peers died on 16th February 2023.
Roger, who was curator of the Dorset County Museum 1959-1992, joined the Editorial Committee of SDNQ in 1977 and was Chairman from 1990 until his retirement in 2012.
The following tribute to Roger Peers appeared in the March 2024 issue of SDNQ:
Obituary for Roger N.R. Peers MA, FSA, FMA (1932-2023)
The death of Roger Peers in February 2023 at the age of 90 robs Dorset of one of its most distinguished post-war figures. Curator of the the Dorset County Museum and Secretary of the Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society from 1959 to 1992, his immense knowledge of the county made inevitable his election to the Editorial Committee of Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries in 1977. He became Chairman in 1990, succeeding Mrs Cosmo Rawlins, finally resigning in 2012. Roger Peers was only the fourth curator of the County Museum, becoming Assistant Curator in 1954 after reading archaeology at Oxford. Although he had no family links to Dorset, he soon immersed himself in the life of the county. He was a true curator, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word, regarding himself as the custodian of the collections in his care with a responsibility to display and explain them to a large audience, particularly the young. During his tenure as Curator he established the Museum’s literary collections, particularly those of Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Townsend Warner and the Powys family, and the Museum twice won the Museum of the Year Award.
I first met him in 1973. The walls either side of the stone fireplace in his office looking out over Cornhill were lined with the oak panelling from Tyneham House, saved following the military occupation of Tyneham village in 1943. The piles of paper balance precariously on his desk and two cloth-covered tables hinted at the range of his interests. Archaeology, architecture, literature, music, art, ceramics, social history, geology – nothing was spared his wonderful enthusiasm for all things to do with Dorset. Pieces of carved medieval stone shared space with Iron Age pottery shards or a fragment of dinosaur vertebra. He championed Dorset artists, building up a fine collection.
His ‘Note’ for the March 1991 issue of SDNQ honouring Sophie Rawlins on her retirement as Chairman is typical of both his scholarship and generosity. It concerned the restoration of an early-Victorian organ from Bridehead, Little Bredy. In four paragraphs he not only meticulously explained the organ’s complex construction but honoured craftsmanship of the organ builder who had restored it. A gift for sharing his knowledge was typical. One of life’s pleasures was receiving a postcard in his tiny almost indecipherable black handwriting about a building he had spotted when walking which he thought might interest me.
I owe him a considerable debt. It will be 50 years in the autumn since the birth of the Dovecote Press with the publication of A Dorset Camera 1855-1914. I was 25, impecunious, gauche, new to Dorset. Roger believed in the idea of the book, giving me free rein of the Museum’s photographic collection. His support opened doors across the county. But for that encouragement my life might have taken a very different turn.
That same counsel marked his years as Chairman of SDNQ. He filled Sophie Rawlins formidable shoes with quiet modesty, giving of his time and expertise. In 2011 he oversaw the County Connections symposium on the historic links between Dorset and Somerset at Downside Abbey, retiring the following year to his house in Beaminster.
DAVID BURNETT