Local Monmouth Historian Remembered

It seems that most of Monmouth knew Keith Kissack. Some were taught by him when he worked as teacher and then headmaster at the Priory School. Some know him through his books, lectures and work with the antiquarian society, history society, the regimental museum and Monmouth town.

Keith was not born here, but he became part of the town. The son of a vicar, he went to an extraordinary prep school in Yorkshire and then Durham school where he excelled mainly at cricket and rugby. He trained to be a teacher in London while living and working at the Docklands Settlement in Canning Town. This was the time when Oswald Moseley’s fascists were patrolling the streets and, recognising the need for social change, Keith joined the Communist party.

He married Audrey Jones, a Monmouth girl, in 1939. With the outbreak of war he enlisted with the Green Howards and served in Palestine, Persia, India and in Italy, where he was seriously wounded. Before he was demobbed he was made adjutant of a resettlement centre for Polish soldiers (and his efforts on behalf of those soldiers were acknowledged at a formal ceremony at the Polish Embassy in 1998). By the end of the war Keith and Audrey had completed their family with two daughters.

After the war, they moved to Dixton Cottage and Keith taught at Whitchurch school. He commuted by bicycle, returning home up Whitchurch pitch with a bucket of kitchen scraps for his two pigs. When he transferred to the school in Priory Street he had more time for his local interests and for his lifelong passion for gardening.

Keith was a founder member of Monmouth’s archaeological and history societies, playing a large part in making Monmouth’s museums what they are today. He wrote a dozen books about Monmouth, its architecture, history and rivers, and gave dozens of inspirational lectures. Monmouth’s celebrated archaeologist, Steve Clark, who was at Keith’s bedside when he died, plans to publish a selection of Keith’s lectures in the near future.

Steve Clark and Geoff Webb have written a eulogy which the family greatly admire. Copies of it will be in the Priory after this service. The following is a summary of that tribute:

We were taught by Keith Kissack at Priory Street Boys’ School, as ten-year olds, nearly sixty years ago. He was an exciting teacher, especially in history and archaeology, which he presented as adventures. Several of us were soon exploring the woods, riverbanks and caves of our own Wye Valley in youthful quests for lost and undiscovered worlds. However, we were gently guided into real research and the several generations of archaeologists conducting excavations in and around Monmouth today are a direct result of the inspirational work of Keith Kissack and his fellow nonagenarian teacher, Mr A. L. Sockett, all those years ago.

Little boys grow up but Keith remained a guiding light.

When we were young Keith Kissack was a Borough Councillor, politically a true independent, and probably one of the best councillors the town has seen, although his battles were sometimes against hopeless odds. For instance, he fought the outrageous routing by the Ministry of Transport of the new A40 dual carriageway along Monmouth’s banks of the Wye. He also fiercely opposed the County Planning Officer’s new ‘Town Plan’ which would have driven a third road across Chippenham destroying Medieval Monmouth in the process. In Keith Kissack we had a consistent and strong but dignified leader, defending the town against the machinations of unscrupulous authority. He taught us that it was indeed worth fighting against the activities of those who did not appear to share our love of Monmouth and its heritage.

In Keith’s own words (from his book The River Wye, 1978):

‘Monmouth, the county town, remained comparatively unspoilt until the twentieth century, and most visitors commended its approaches. The poet Gray, in 1771, wrote “Monmouth… lies… in a vale that is a delight of my eyes and the very seat of pleasure”…. Leitch Ritchie, in 1836, could find “no offensive contrast to the beautiful scenery by which it is surrounded”.

He would not say as much today. The river, as it nears the bridge, finds itself hemmed in between a depressingly inappropriate industrial estate and caravan park on the left side and, on the right, the vast embankment of the A40, brutally severing it from the town itself. These major blunders of the planners have deprived Monmouth of a river frontage worth looking at… On the other hand, where the town has been allowed to grow naturally, it has retained much of its Georgian elegance and charm.’

Keith also served the town in other ways. He was a magistrate, a headmaster and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London who received his MBE for services to Monmouth and its history. But surely, Keith’s greatest legacy to Monmouth are his books, the last of which Monmouth and its buildings, he published just in time for his 90th Birthday. It is in his books that one can see other aspects of Keith’s character: a real sense of humour and an ability to see the ridiculous side of those in authority, of his contempt for cruelty and injustice, and above all, his love of Monmouth.

His books are made up of examples of the way in which he reconstructed fragments of local history to make it both alive and relevant today. In Victorian Monmouth (1977) when discussing some of the problems of 19th century education with children staying away from school for all manner of reasons, he wrote:

‘If attendance was the chief trouble, the public were more concerned with behaviour, and letters (to the Beacon) on the subject appear with monotonous regularity throughout the century. The tone was set in 1860 in a letter denouncing the “bestial behaviour” of children assembling for school in Priory Street … In 1873, when an inspector had been favourably impressed by the infants there, a letter appeared questioning his hearing and eyesight, and describing in detail, the noise, language and ferocity of the infants as they came out of school.’

Whether bringing together details of judicial cruelty in the 1ith century, the introduction of the Monmouth police force, the fierce conflict surrounding the construction of the Slaughterhouses, or observing the details of Monmouth’s architecture, Keith’s ability to gather and bind diverse fragments of our past into accessible prose was remarkable. He could sum up a period with a succinct clarity that leaves the reader wanting more:

‘Until the mid-nineteenth century… sanitation was still non-existent. The streets were filthy… Women were expected to behave better than men, so when in 1856 two men and two girls were taken to court for immoral behaviour, the girls each received two months hard labour and the men were told not to do it again. Public transport was rare and uncomfortable. The churchyard was raised high above the street by accumulating corpses. In spite of the amount of ale consumed, water was still the most dangerous drink, as the water cart was filled a few yards below the entry of the town drain to the river. Most wells received their water from springs in the churchyard. Animals continued to be slaughtered in Butcher’s Row (Church Street). Huge crowds gathered to watch men being hanged from the gallows on the roof of the county gaol. Bulls and badgers were publicly baited in the Bull Ring. Teeth were extracted by the blacksmith and amputations were performed without anaesthetics…

For Keith, the past provided lessons for the present. 35 years ago he wrote a passage in his book Monmouth – the making of a County Town that is still appropriate today:

‘The assumption that commercial prosperity is all-important has ruined more towns than it has saved. Monmouth has not yet been completely vulgarised; it is still small enough for the individual voice to be heard, and for those who feel that development is not the only form to progress to make their views known. But the danger is there, and there is a certain similarity between the effects the railways had in the 19th Century and the effect the Severn Bridge and the new trunk road are having today. And this ever increasing accessibility underlines the importance of Monmouth’s particular virtue, which is not its prosperity, its status nor its enterprise, but that it has remained a pleasant place to live in – a community “well inhabited” by people who live here because they like it.’

Keith adopted Monmouth, and it adopted him. His remarkable personality is manifest throughout his writings, and those who knew him will treasure memories of his friendship and his enduring affection for the architecture and history of the town. Although he was sometimes militant in defence of Monmouth – and in that he was an inspiration to us all – there was not an unkind bone in his body.

Today we mourn the passing of one of the outstanding men in the history of our town. He will be sadly missed by all those who he inspired and, indeed, by everyone who loves Monmouth.

Our thanks to Andy and Bethia Smith for their kind permission to publish this article.