School of Humanities | Sgoil nan Daonnachdan

The Dalrymple Lectures

This prestigious lecture series was instituted by James Dalrymple Gray of Dalrymple. He was born in July 1852 in Newcastle – upon – Tyne to the Reverend Thomas Gray and his wife Mary Dalrymple. He later assumed his mother’s family name when, on the death of his uncle, he succeeded to the estates belonging to the family. He studied law at both Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, and subsequently practised in Glasgow.

In 1877 he became the honorary Secretary of Glasgow Archaeological Society which was in decline at that time. With the help of others he succeeded in reinvigorating the Society and held the post of Secretary for some 25 years. He introduced the regular monthly meeting on the third Thursday of the month (a practice still in force today) and often presented papers on a range of topics, particularly castles and churches. He became President of the Society in 1904.

In 1908 he instituted the Dalrymple Lectureship in Archaeology in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Society. By means of a generous bequest in his will he ensured its continuation to this day. The subject of the lectures was to be ‘some branch of European archaeology’.

The annual Dalrymple Lectures have been given by many of the most distinguished figures in twentieth and twenty-firast century archaeology and is administered by a committee of Curators drawn from the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Archaeological Society.