Nigel Seeley; forensic scientist & conservationist
Hyfler/Rosner
Nigel Seeley
Forensic scientist and Head of Conservation at the National
Trust
26 June 2004
When the National Trust's 17th-century house Uppark, high on
the West Sussex downs, was almost destroyed by fire in
August 1989, 95 per cent of the contents of the ground floor
and 5,000 pieces of woodwork were saved - from whole doors
to fragments of wallpaper trim - and the controversial
decision was taken to restore the house to its previous
condition. The trust undertook the largest and most complex
single conservation rescue operation ever mounted, Florence
and Windsor perhaps excepted, which took four years and cost
£20m.
The trust's Surveyor of Conservation responsible was Nigel
Seeley, a former police scientist. "Seeking out information
from incomplete evidence," he insisted, "applies to works of
art just as it does to forensic science; precisely the same
analytical techniques apply."
Scientific research applied to the problems involved in the
preservation of what has survived from the past is a
relatively recent phenomenon. True, those whose task is to
treat material, whether individual objects or the
environment in which they survive, have long been aware of
the need to understand the physical, chemical or biological
facts involved in decay and any intervention to prevent it.
But the realisation that research not directly connected
with any specific material problem is the key to successful
intervention is still new. Such research as a career is
hardly even now established in the academic curriculum.
If one person can be credited with showing how it could be
done, it was Seeley. His too early death is the greater
blow, as his career had just opened out on a new phase that
might have had a still greater impact on the science of
conservation.
The whole subject was, in a sense, in the blood. His father,
Jack Seeley, was an engineer by profession, who became
chairman of the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors.
Nigel Seeley was born in 1942 in Worcester Park, on London's
south-west outskirts, and grew up in New Malden. His regular
birthday present from an early age was a constantly
augmented chemistry set.
Chemistry, equally, was an important part of a successful
but broadly based education at King's College School,
Wimbledon, whence he went briefly to Queen Mary College. For
a time he worked by day at London University Library,
continuing his academic study by night at Birkbeck College.
This soon became full-time, and he took a joint BSc in
Physics and Chemistry in 1966, following it with a PhD in
Inorganic Chemistry in 1970.
But then, as later, his was not a mind restricted to
anything so limited as one branch of science. He read
anything and everything, and any room, office or house that
he lived or worked in always began to overflow with books.
Books, to read and as physical structures, always fascinated
him, and any library or bookshop (particularly second-hand
bookshops) was an irresistible lure. He became increasingly
interested in the survival of books from the past and the
factors that enabled some to survive for centuries, while
others, more recent, decayed more rapidly.
This, coupled with his wide knowledge of the chemistry of
materials, well qualified him for his first job as a Senior
Scientific Officer in the Home Office Forensic Department.
His work involved all sorts of problems, from analysing the
forgery of wills, commercial bonds or credit cards to
bloodstains on blunt instruments (usually inorganic).
Occasionally, this took him into the world of books and
manuscripts, and in 1972 he planned the forensic tests that
exposed Frederic Prokosch's forged first editions of modern
authors. It was a collaboration between the Scotland Yard
and the British Library at his behest that produced the
Video Spectral Comparator (VSC), using the combination of
ultra-violet and infra-red light to reveal obliterated or
erased writing.
Seeley and I had first met in 1965 when his eye was caught
by an article in The Book Collector on the use of X-
radiography in reproducing watermarks in paper, and one of
his earliest publications was on the use of beta-radiography
for the same purpose. Characteristically, it was the
combination of physics and biology, as well as the chemical
consequences, involved in the process that attracted him.
In 1972 he married Mary-Ann Pullé, who then worked in the
British Museum Research Laboratory and shared his interests;
her support and a close-knit family life underpinned his
career thereafter. Next year he left the Home Office to
become Head of the Department of Archaeological Conservation
and Materials Science at the Institute of Archaeology in
London University (from 1986 part of University College
London). This was a huge task, involving teaching a large
number of postgraduate students as well as continuing
research. It also provided a base for wider research for
Seeley himself.
A flow of important papers, mostly involved with minerals in
an archaeological context, began. They dealt with X-ray
diffraction and spectroscopy as a means of analysing decay
in different kinds of stone, the identity of compounds in
ancient bronze and iron artefacts, the chemical analysis of
old papers, and many other topics. They appeared in a wide
range of journals and conference proceedings, two of them,
"Identification of Ancient Heat Treatment in Flint Artefacts
by ESR Spectroscopy" and "Trapped Methyl Radicals in Chert",
in Nature.
Every year, there was an open day on which the work of the
department and the students was on display, all of it
original, some of it strikingly so. Originally a reward for
the students, it became a first-class advertisement for the
institute as well. Seeley was rightly proud of the quality
and diversity of this work, and his students rewarded the
sympathy and insight that he poured into their work with
affection and loyalty.
He also found time for work outside the institute. In 1976
he undertook a wide-ranging survey of the huge conservation
needs facing the newly formed British Library, and took part
in a research project on the consolidation of degraded paper
(whose completion still awaits funding). He was on the Mary
Rose Trust conservation panel, and was Consultant to the
Unesco-Sri Lanka "Cultural Triangle" Project.
After 15 years, however, a new and greater challenge
emerged. The National Trust, with a range of conservation
responsibilities from artefacts of every size and shape to
the landscape itself, saw the need for coordination of
effort on this vast front, and created a post to supervise
it. Seeley was the ideal person for the task. First as
Surveyor, then (when in 1999 trust posts were renamed) Head
of Conservation, he was responsible for all the work
undertaken both locally and nationally by the several
advisers on specific fields of conservation.
Creating a common policy, welding together the work of many
who had hitherto worked without direct supervision, called
for a clear head, firm management and unrelenting powers of
persuasion. Seeley's natural if never over-emphatic warmth
and encouragement induced a sense of common purpose, as well
as high standards of individual treatment. Many new
projects, such as the conversion of the great battery house
at Petworth in Sussex as a workshop for the treatment of
large objects (from carriages to ironwork) and the
specialist Textile Conservation Centre at Blickling in
Norfolk, were due to his initiative.
He also became interested in the special problem of the
preservation of artefacts in situ and even in use, as well
as the impact of visitors on historic buildings, and
published pioneering studies on both. These preparations
came into their own for the restoration of Uppark, completed
in 1994.
The National Trust's "Putting to Bed" days, meanwhile, made
transparent to the public the annual behind-the-scenes
business of cleaning and conservation as individual houses
were closed for the winter. "We are running what are, in
effect, museums without glass cases," said Seeley. "But
visitors understandably prefer the great houses to have a
'lived-in' feeling. This gives us extra conservation
problems which purpose-built museums do not have."
He took a leading part in planning the trust's
computer-based catalogue of objects, and again found time
for outside work, on the Council of the Society of
Antiquaries, for the Horniman Museum, the Science and
Engineering Research Council Science Based Archaeology
Committee, the Indian National Trust and (perhaps closest to
his heart) the Rochester Cathedral Fabric Advisory
Committee.
Seeley left the National Trust in 2002, and next year became
Visiting Professor, UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage, at
the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, where he was
planning a new range of work on materials science in
relation to historic artefacts and buildings and the
environmental interactions between them. He was looking
forward to a host of other projects, to which his catholic
vision and always enquiring mind would have brought new
ideas and new achievements.
Nicolas Barker
Nigel John Seeley, conservation scientist: born Worcester
Park, Surrey 25 April 1942; Senior Scientific Officer,
Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory 1969-73;
Head of Department of Archaeological Conservation and
Materials Science, Institute of Archaeology, London
University (from 1986 University College London) 1974-89;
FSA 1980; Surveyor of Conservation, National Trust 1989-99,
Head of Conservation 1999-2002; Honorary Research Fellow,
University College London 1992-2003; married 1972 Mary-Ann
Pullé (three sons); died London 21 June 2004.