A Legacy Gift from Emeritus and Founding Fellow Dennis Britton
Founding Fellow Dennis Britton
The College has recently received a remarkable legacy gift from one of its founding fellows, Dennis Britton, who generously left his house in North Oxford and a selection of his books to St Cross in his will. We are deeply grateful to Dennis for his generosity. His gift will have a lasting impact on the St Cross community for generations to come.
In addition to this legacy gift, Dennis was a loyal and longstanding supporter of St Cross. He established his first regular gift in 1981 and, from then on, gave frequently and generously to a range of causes, most notably Scholarships and the Building Fund. Supporting scholarships was particularly important to him, reflecting both the support he received when he was a student and his service as Secretary to the Scholarships Committee and as Senior Tutor until the College moved to St Giles.
Last May, we celebrated Dennis’s life and contribution to the College at a memorial service. Dennis studied the Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating, he worked as an assistant to Christopher Hawkes, Oxford’s inaugural Professor of European Archaeology, and was a member of The Queen’s College, Oxford. In 1960, he was appointed University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Ethnology and Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where he combined curatorial work with teaching on the Diploma in Prehistoric Archaeology and the Diploma in Ethnology.
He had a longstanding interest in later prehistoric metalwork and co-authored Metallurgical Reports on British and Irish Bronze Age Implements and Weapons in the Pitt Rivers Museum (1970). He also published articles in Archaeometry, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, and Antiquity. Through his work, he contributed significantly to the development of archaeology and museums in Oxford, as well as to the early history of the College.
Dennis was a proud non-don Founding Fellow of St Cross and often spoke fondly of the original St Cross Hut. He attended College dinners whenever his health allowed and took great pleasure in keeping up to date with College life. Although he retired in 1993, he remained an active and valued member of the community, regularly attending St Cross lunches well into his retirement.
Legacy gifts have played a meaningful role in the College’s development over the last 60 years, helping us to support many talented students who would not otherwise have been able to come to Oxford.
To find out more about legacy giving to St Cross, please visit our Legacy Giving page.
