Bob Morris: an appreciation

Abstract

In September 1966, a meeting in Leicester, described as a ‘round table’, was arranged by Dr H.J. Dyos. It was prompted by a groundswell of interest in cities and urban development, both historical and contemporary, and was multidisciplinary in character. Invitations were sent to distinguished academic historians, early career lecturers and a few doctoral students, one of whom was Mr R.J. Morris. He had recently (1965) completed a BA degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics whilst at Keble College, Oxford and had embarked on a doctorate supervised jointly by two distinguished economic historians, Professor H.J. Habakkuk (Nuffield College) and medievalist, Professor Maurice Beresford (Leeds). Bob’s topic was the ‘Organization and aims of the principal secular voluntary organizations of the Leeds middle class 1830–51’ (1971). A few years before, in 1963, Jim Dyos had initiated a series of Urban History Newsletters which informed the direction of scholarly travel, but it was the Study of Urban History (1968), as the subsequent book of the round table proceedings was entitled, that set out agendas for understanding the range, scope and nature of urban historical scholarship. Bob Morris was present in Leicester, therefore, at an embryonic stage in the development of urban history. Consistent with the tone of that meeting, Bob’s interdisciplinary engagement with the histories of towns and cities endured throughout his life. Robert John Morris (always Bob) was born in wartime Sheffield, the son of Barbara Joan (née Aston) and George Ernest Morris. His father was a teacher first in Wakefield and then in Leeds (1943–54), and it was while the family lived in Guiseley (north-west Leeds) during years of post-war rationing that Bob, encouraged by his father, developed an interest in allotments. The family moved to Middlesbrough when Bob’s father was appointed headmaster at the local grammar school. Bob attended the other Middlesbrough grammar school, Acklam Hall, which he left in 1962 for Oxford to begin his undergraduate studies. During a summer vacation in 1966 and while undertaking excavations at the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire, Bob met Barbara McConnell from Belfast. Their shared historical, archaeological and cartographic interests were evident and the following year they undertook an intrepid journey from Aberystwyth to Athens in a mini-van studying Byzantine monasteries in former Yugoslavia en route. The origins of Bob’s Irish research interests are not difficult to detect. They were married in Ireland in 1967. The following year, Bob was appointed to a lectureship at Edinburgh University in the newly created