Kenneth St Joseph - Aerial Photography

Aerial Photography

As a school boy, St Joseph had been interested in Roman Britain and in the 1930s, he was able to exploit a family connection to take part in an excavation at Hadrian's Wall where he met O G S Crawford. From this meeting, St Joseph developed an interest in aerial photography. St Joseph's subsequent war time experience convinced him that aerial photography had a potentially vital role in discovering and analyzing archaeological sites. In 1948 he was appointed curator (and subsequently, director) of aerial photography at Cambridge University. Initially, he was able to persuade the RAF to take photographs for him without charge. When the RAF became unwilling to continue this programme, the university authorities hired an aircraft. In 1965, they bought a Cessna Skymaster 337 and employed a pilot, allowing for a systematic and extensive programme of aerial archaeology. This aircraft remained in use for forty years.

Numerous new and important sites were discovered as a result of these surveys, including Mucking which was photographed on 16 June 1959. This discovery resulted in a major excavation lasting 13 years. His interest in Roman Britain continued, and the aerial survey work discovered more than 200 previously unknown Roman forts.

Some of the results of these photographic surveys were published in a series of books, the first of which - Monastic sites from the air - included text annotating the photos from David Knowles, Professor of Medieval History, who had been an influential supporter of St Joseph's appointment. The collection is now housed in the Cambridge University Unit for Landscape Modelling which is the new name for the Aerial Photography unit.