[BITList] From on high

[John Feltham]

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St Joseph,  (John) Kenneth Sinclair  (1912-1994), geologist, archaeologist, and aerial photographer, was born on 13 November 1912 at Rose Cottage, Cookley, Worcestershire, the only surviving son of John Daniel St Joseph, a forestry officer with the Indian forest service, and his wife, Irma Robertson, nee Marris. He was educated at Bromsgrove School and went to read natural sciences at Selwyn College, Cambridge, in 1931. He graduated in 1934 and, after research on Silurian Brachiopoda, completed his PhD on the Pentameracea of southern Norway in 1937. He was made a university demonstrator in geology the same year, and a lecturer in natural sciences at Selwyn College, and also dean, in 1939.

During the 1930s, in addition to his university responsibilities, St Joseph worked on numerous archaeological excavations, usually relating to Roman sites, including Housesteads and Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall. In 1939, through his friendship with O. G. S. Crawford (the father of aerial and field survey in Britain and founding editor of the journal Antiquity) he was able to experience airborne exploration for the first time, in southern Scotland, having access to a Puss Moth for two days. During the Second World War he was stationed with the operational research section (Bomber Command) in the Ministry of Aircraft Production at RAF High Wycombe, where he was able to develop skills as an aerial photograph interpreter, especially of night-time photography of raids. He also visited Hollywood during the war, where he met Walt Disney and such famous stars as Greta Garbo, but always maintained he had not heard of them. On 21 August 1945 he married Daphne Margaret March, whom he had known since 1920. She was the daughter of Herbert March, solicitor, and was two years his junior. They had two daughters and two sons.

St Joseph returned to Cambridge in 1945 as a university lecturer in geology and dean, tutor, lecturer in natural sciences, and (from 1946) librarian at Selwyn College. While carrying out these duties he also created what was to become the first and most successful university-based aerial reconnaissance and interpretation centre in the world, developing single-handed the science of aerial survey and photography for scholarly and scientific purposes. A rare scholar whose interests and skills crossed the usual academic boundaries, he was instrumental in developing new methodologies for archaeological research-namely aerial reconnaissance and aerial photograph interpretation. In 1945, with his first flight from Cambridge, he began what became the Cambridge University collection of aerial photographs (formally constituted in 1949). By the time of his death this contained almost a million photographs, but it was much more than a mere collection: it was a powerhouse of information and interpretation, transforming through its publications and teaching the understanding of Britain's (and to a lesser extent Europe's) geological, prehistoric, and historic past. St Joseph's work in this field was recognized by his being made curator of aerial photography at Cambridge in 1948, full-time director of aerial photography in 1962, and professor of aerial photographic studies (and professorial fellow of Selwyn College) from 1973 until his retirement in 1980. He also served as vice-master of Selwyn College from 1974 to 1980. Establishing air photography at Cambridge cannot have been easy, as it was a new venture, and applicable to many disciplines. The RAF helped initially by providing their aircraft (and pilots), and he was able to convince the university, through the discoveries he had made, to find the funds for his new unit. As with so much research, there was an element of luck. Archaeologists who specialize in aerial reconnaissance rely on the weather to a large extent, and drought summers especially, since droughts produce the necessary ground and growing conditions for sites to be revealed as cropmarks. In 1949 Britain was bathed in sunshine, and St Joseph took full advantage. His contribution was not only to record many sites for the first, and in some cases the only, time, but he was airborne every day (when the aircraft were serviceable) from 10 June to 28 July, clocking up some 154 hours in 35 days. His hand-written logs (always written up in pencil within days of a flight) for July 1949 show a series of remarkable discoveries, including the Roman legionary fortress of Inchtuthil in Scotland.

As early as 1937 St Joseph had been invited by Crawford to compile the border sheet of the Ordnance Survey's new Roman Map of Britain. Between 1945 and 1990 he and his successors (in particular David R. Wilson) were responsible for the discovery and photography of 40 Roman garrison forts, and over 185 Roman temporary camps, making a fundamentally important contribution to the understanding of the political and military history of Roman Britain. However, despite his passion for Roman archaeology and Roman Scotland in particular, he was also responsible for discovering numerous prehistoric sites and accelerating the growth and creation of the sub-discipline of medieval archaeology. Through his approach to understanding landscapes he could see, from the air, swathes of medieval field systems and more complex patterns of earthworks, which he interpreted as deserted medieval villages and settlements. His photographs are a crucial record of these lost landscapes, since the intensification of agriculture in the post-war years led to the wholescale destruction of many of these sites and landscapes.

St Joseph was a key member of the Ancient Monuments Board from 1969 to 1984, and every year he sent proposals to the inspectorate for sites he had discovered to be protected; many of them were. One of his discoveries in 1949 was protected as a scheduled ancient monument, having been described as an Iron Age settlement; forty years later part of it was discovered to be even older, dating to the Neolithic period (c.3000 BC). He was also a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) from 1972 to 1981. He was appointed OBE in 1964 and CBE in 1979, and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1978.

St Joseph's attention to detail and indefatigable questioning of what he was interpreting, coupled with his great observational skills, meant that there were few who could match his skill and knowledge of the landscapes of Britain (and even Europe). His publications, as part of the Cambridge University Press Air Survey series, working with key specialists, were unsurpassed as foundation texts for researchers of these areas: they included Monastic Sites from the Air (1952, with David Knowles), Medieval England, an Aerial Survey (1958, with Maurice Beresford), The Early Development of Irish Society (1970, with E. R. Norman), and Roman Britain from the Air (1983, with S. S. Frere). In addition he published more than fifty articles in journals, in particular reports on recent reconnaissance for the journal Antiquity, and an introductory text, Uses of Air Photography (1966), a masterpiece of interpretation, elucidation, and presentation.

Latterly St Joseph lived at Histon Manor, Histon, Cambridgeshire, where he devoted much of his spare energy to clearing trees and cleaning out the moat, until he was eighty. He died at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, on 11 March 1994 of a heart attack, and (a devout Anglican) was buried in Histon churchyard. He was survived by his wife, Daphne, and their four children.

Robert Bewley 

Sources  The Independent (18 March 1994) + New York Times (21 March 1994) + The Times (26 March 1994) + The Guardian (4 April 1994) + D. R. Wilson, PBA, 87 (1995), 417-36 + R. E. Glasscock, Journal of Historical Geography, 21/1 (1995), 75-7 + S. S. Frere, Britannia, 26 (1995), ix-xi + WWW + personal knowledge (2010) + private information (2010) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, corresp. and papers + U. Cam., unit for landscape modelling | Bodl. Oxf., letters, O. G. S. Crawford MSS
Likenesses   photograph, repro. in PBA · obituary photographs · photograph, Selwyn College, Cambridge [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £1,231,990: probate, 10 June 1994, CGPLA Eng. & Wales · under £125,000: further grant, 20 Feb 1995, CGPLA Eng. & Wales