Rugby Archaeological Society was founded in 1961 by a group of amateur archaeologists to excavate the site of the Roman town of Tripontium. Although none of the original members are still involved, the Society's objectives remain unchanged.
Until 2006 the members of RAS, under the direction of Jack Lucas, concentrated their activities on thoroughly investigating the locality of the Roman settlement of Tripontium in order to record and publish the findings of the excavation. However, sadly Jack died in March 2006.
In 2012 the Society was relaunched under the leadership of Chairman Dr Graham Morgan. At that time a programme of open meetings and activities was organised in conjunction with Rugby Art Gallery and Museum (RAGM). Despite the pandemic, regular meetings still continue via Zoom, with a range of excellent talks by prestigious speakers.
Sadly Graham suffered a stroke in 2017, which left him less mobile than he had been. Despite these problems, he continued to serve as RAS Chairman until, sadly, he died in July 2021.
In September 2021 an Extraordinary General Meeting was held via Zoom and Jacob Streatfeild-James (Jake) was elected as the new RAS Chairman. Jake is currently working on many new initiatives for RAS and the members.
The programme of meetings continues to operate, currently via Zoom at present, between October and June a Saturday Morning of Archaeology, normally on the second Saturday of each month. We hope to be able to have some meetings in RAGM very soon and possibly other activities.
Occasionally, visits and field trips are organised, usually during the summer. We have some exiting events planned for summer 2022.
Please see the EVENTS page for recent and future speakers and news of other events.
RAS is also involved in a range of fieldwork activities often in conjunction with other local societies and Jake is planning to expand the practical archaeology activities very soon.
As Trustees of the valuable Tripontium Collection the secondary role of the Society is to safeguard, preserve and, where necessary, take steps to conserve all the artefacts from the site. The Collection is stored in the archives of RAGM.
In December 2006 the Rugby Museum Gallery was renamed the Jack Lucas Archaeology Gallery, to commemorate the important contribution that Jack made to Archaeology in general, but particularly to the understanding of Tripontium's place in Roman Britain. However, the Gallery and the adjacent museum space containing the town's social history, was later repurposed to accommodate the World of Rugby exhibition. A smaller display of finds from Tripontium was created on the second floor of RAGM, which is still open for visitors today. The World of Rugby exhibit has recently closed and the future purpose for the first floor exhibition space, including the former Jack Lucas Gallery, is at present undecided.
During the lifetime of the Society many young people have worked on the Tripontium site and several of these volunteers have chosen a career in archaeology as a result of their experiences there. There have been collaborations between the Society and various other organisations and institutions at different times.
In 1994 the Society received an award at the British Archaeological Awards for the work undertaken at Tripontium. An article about this appeared in Current Archaeology number 145 in November 1995.
In 2004 the Society was awarded the Pitt Rivers Award at the British Archaeological Awards. Several publications have been produced about the excavations at Tripontium. These are described in the Publications page of this web site.