Read more about the Society of Antiquaries of London

John Hopkins was fond of observing that people interested in antiquity are prone to become a part of it, and his own life bore witness to this. He was a lifelong servant of the 300-year-old Society of Antiquaries of London, starting work as a boy of 14 at its imposing premises in Burlington House, Piccadilly, in 1933 and not retiring until 68 in 1986. He was a Fellow until his death and was therefore associated with the society for 74 years. No one else has been associated with it for so long.

John Henry Hopkins was born in London in 1918 and lived there all his life. His father, who had the same name, worked in the building trade, at one time employed by the music-hall impresario Fred Karno whose Fun Factory and scenery store was a few streets away. Hopkins’s irreverent sense of humour and love of the music-hall perhaps derived from this contact. He owed his first position as general assistant at the Society of Antiquaries to his mother’s connections with the Minet family, the wealthy owners of the nearby Minet estate. William Minet had been the society’s treasurer, and his daughter, Susan, proved later to be one of the society’s greatest benefactors.

Hopkins left school in 1933 at what was then the normal school-leaving age of 14, preferring the certainty of work in insecure times to the school scholarship that he was offered. During the Second World War he was asked by the archaeologist and later society president, Mortimer Wheeler, to join his new regiment, but in the meantime received his call-up and instead served in North Africa and the Middle East with the Royal Army Pay Corps.

First appointed general assistant, Hopkins studied librarianship in evening classes at Goldsmiths College and was appointed library clerk in 1946. He got to know many of the leading archaeologists and art historians of the time, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of readers’ interests and helped many in their research. Wheeler, in particular, relied on Hopkins’s briefings before his appearances on the popular television quiz show of the 1950s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?

His extensive knowledge of the collections and dedication to the society secured him the post of librarian in 1964. Under his cheerful guidance, there was a dramatic expansion in the use and size of the library, securing its place as the leading source of written information on British archaeology and related subjects. Academic recognition of his contribution came nine years later. He was awarded an honorary MA by the University of Leicester for services to antiquarian scholarship. The society’s statutes were changed to allow him to become a Fellow (previously employees had been banned) and in 1983, to mark 50 years’ devoted service, he was given the society’s only silver medal.

He was also a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute from 1954, served on its council, was a vice-president, and regularly took part in the summer excursions.

His involvement with the society and the institute ceased in the past few years with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. However, he was able to visit the society’s tercentenary exhibition, Making History, at the Royal Academy in 2007 and enjoy the public display of many items from the collections that had been in his care for so long.

A bronze bust, completed shortly after his death by David Neal, FSA, is intended to be placed in the society’s library. He is survived by his wife and by a son and a daughter.

John Hopkins, librarian and antiquarian, was born on April 26, 1918. He died on February 19, 2008, aged 89