Archaeologist and historian; Born April 1, 1920; Died July 26, 2007. Dr Sylvia Clark, who has died aged 87, was a pioneering advocate of industrial archaeology in Scotland who made a considerable contribution to local studies and community life in her adopted home, Paisley.
She was born into a working-class family in 1920 in the borough of St Pancras in London. After attending Camden School for Girls she won a place at Girton College, Cambridge, where she achieved a double first in English and Classics in 1941 and completed an MA (on translations of Latin poetry in seventeenth-century England) four years later.
Although her teaching career began at Sherborne School for Girls, her deeper commitment was to the kind of society that a progressive educational system could produce. Moving to Manchester, she began to teach liberal studies to students of advanced technology.
By 1970 her work as a lecturer in history at the University of Salford had so impressed her colleague, Harry Sheldon, that he encouraged her to join his new Department of Social Studies at Paisley College of Technology. She had hoped that the college would establish a course in industrial archaeology, and, when this failed to happen, began her own private researches into the archaeology and history of the industrial revolution in Renfrewshire.
Clark demonstrated considerable patience and diligence in following up on industrial archaeology evidence at a time when few people were taking it seriously. Her studies of eighteenth and nineteenth-century industrial sites in Renfrewshire were for a time the only record.
Her political views were held with conviction, but worn lightly. One of her treasured memories was a trek round the London borough counts on the night of July 25, 1945, when the Labour Party achieved its first substantial General Election victory. Later, she joined the Communist Party..
Retirement enabled Clark to concentrate on research and writing. In 1988 she published her History of Paisley (which is still the most readable and informed book on the subject), and gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree (on the use of water power in eighteenth-century Scotland) through the Open University two years later.
During her 37 years as an adopted Buddy, she immersed herself wholeheartedly in the local community. She became a respected authority on a number of aspects of the history of Paisley and Renfrewshire. She helped to found the Old Paisley Society in 1977 and played a major role in the acquisition and development of the Sma' Shot Cottage (a former weaver cottage, now a tourist attraction).
Clark took a keen interest in the Paisley Canal and Waterway Society and was an active member of the Archaeological Society and the Scottish Railways Preservation Society. She was a co-founder and president of Renfrewshire Local History Forum, a committee member of the Scottish Society for Industrial Archaeology and president of the Scottish Local History Forum.
She remained fit and active into ripe old age, joining arduous field trips of the Renfrewshire Local History Forum. Last September Sylvia was the victim of a mugging. It was characteristic of her tenacity that she resisted the attack and as a result her assailant was apprehended and jailed. She will be remembered as a unique and memorable character who made a significant contribution to local studies and community life in Renfrewshire.
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