Professor William Francis Grimes (31 October 1905 – 25 December 1988) was a Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 archaeologist who devoted his career to the archaeology of London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and the prehistory of Wales

Prehistoric Wales

Prehistoric Wales in terms of human settlements covers the period from about 230,000 years ago, the date attributed to the earliest human remains found in what is now Wales, to the year 48 AD when the Roman army began a military campaign against one of the Welsh tribes...

. Born in Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....

, Wales, he received his education at the University of Wales

University of Wales

The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...

. He held a number of prominent posts in Wales, including Chairman of the Royal Commission for Ancient Monuments in Wales. He published two influential volumes on the prehistory of Wales, with a particular interest in the Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

.

During the 1950s and 60s Grimes carried out dozens of excavations in the city of London in his capacity as director of both the Museum of London

Museum of London

The Museum of London documents the history of London from the Prehistoric to the present day. The museum is located close to the Barbican Centre, as part of the striking Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 70s as an innovative approach to re-development within a bomb damaged...

 and the Institute of Archaeology

Institute of Archaeology

The UCL Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London , England. It is one of the largest departments of archaeology in the world, with over 80 members of academic staff and 500 students...

, the institution within the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

 founded by Sir Mortimer Wheeler

Mortimer Wheeler

Brigadier Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH, CIE, MC, FBA, FSA , was one of the best-known British archaeologists of the twentieth century.-Education and career:...

 in 1937.

Grimes' most famous discovery was the London Mithraeum

Temple of Mithras, London

The Temple of Mithras, Walbrook is a Roman temple whose ruins were discovered in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during rebuilding work in 1954. It is perhaps the most famous of all twentieth-century Roman discoveries in the City of London....

 in 1954, a Roman temple

Roman temple

Ancient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion. The main room housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was...

 to the god Mithras, uncovered during rebuilding work on a central London bomb site off Walbrook

Walbrook

Walbrook is the name of a ward, a street and a subterranean river in the City of London.-Underground river:The river played a key role in the Roman settlement of Londinium, the city now known as London. It is thought that the river was named because it ran through or under the London Wall; another...

. Although the site was built over, Grimes succeeded in salvaging many of its finds and features including marble statuary attesting to the wealth of its congregation.

As a result of public pressure a replica temple was rebuilt elsewhere.

Published works

• Grimes, W. F., The Megalithic Monuments of Wales (1936)
• ——, The Prehistory of Wales (1951)
• ——, 'Excavations in the City of London', in Bruce-Mitford R.L.S. (ed.) Recent Archaeological Excavations in Britain, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956.

External links