John Steane obituary

A 1976 Guardian newspaper job advertisement was pivotal in changing the course of my husband John Steane’s life. It was offering the post of field officer at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock.

During his previous working life as a school history teacher, John had been a lively leader of field trips and archaeology experiments and so he leapt at the opportunity, succeeded in his application, and soon became county archaeologist for Oxfordshire.

Over the next 20 years, John recorded and interpreted more than 90 buildings in response to planning applications. He was a formidable force in defending the landscape and was nicknamed “the Steaneroller” by his colleagues. He was a founder member of the Oxfordshire Buildings Record and the Oxfordshire Buildings Trust, and in 1972 was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

John, who has died aged 92, published articles, produced fine pen-and-ink drawings of buildings and wrote books of significance, such as Oxfordshire (1996), The Archaeology of Power (2001) and, with James Ayres, Traditional Buildings in the Oxford Region (2013). He also taught at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education.

Born in Balham, south London, he was the son of Edith (nee Mann) and Frank Steane, an army captain during the first world war who had been mentioned in dispatches and later worked as a clerk. John won a scholarship to Dulwich college and cycled to school among the metal debris of second world war aerial raids.

From Dulwich he won another scholarship, to study history at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was inspired by the revolutionary message of his tutor, WG Hoskins, author of The Making of the English Landscape, who said: “Put on your boots, go into the fields, leave the libraries.”

It was at Oxford that John met Nina Carroll, an accomplished watercolourist. They married in 1954 and had three children. John began his teaching career, first in Liverpool, then at Southport grammar, creating the first of his “history boys” (pupils who won history scholarships to Oxbridge) before being appointed at the age of 33 as head of Kettering grammar school.

Nina died in 1990 and their son Peter later the same year. John and I were neighbours and we married in 1991. He is survived by me, his daughters, Kate and Anna, a grandson, Bruno, and great-grandson, Ethan.