It is doubly appropriate that the Prehistoric Society should celebrate its
jubilee in Norwich. The Society was born in the Castle on 23 February 1935
of a parent conceived improbably enough in the Public Library at a meeting
held on 26 October 1908 to inaugurate an East Anglian Society ‘for the study
of all matters appertaining to prehistoric man’. The question I want you to
consider in this address is how the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia
developed so rapidly to the point at which it achieved national status as
The Prehistoric Society. Let me begin by removing one misapprehension. My
hands are not dripping with East Anglian blood nor have I just wiped them
clean. The Prehistoric Society was not the outcome of a revolutionary
putsch. It stemmed from nothing more dramatic than a recognition that the
Prehistoric Society had long ceased to be East Anglian. When we met at
Norwich Castle for our Annual General Meeting in 1935 and passed the
resolution which eliminated the words ‘of East Anglia’ from our title we
were merely recognizing a fact, that we had long ceased to be East Anglian
in anything but name. There were no dissentient votes.The two men who between them set the Prehistoric Society on its feet came
from different but complementary backgrounds. W. G. Clarke was Norfolk born
and bred and earned his living as a working journalist in Norwich, while
cultivating a wide-ranging interest in natural history and prehistoric
archaeology.
