David Evans (archivist)

Sir David Lewis Evans, OBE, FRHistS (14 August 1893 – 23 April 1987) was a Welsh archivist who served as executive head of the Public Record Office from 1954 to 1960 (under the successive titles of Deputy Keeper of Public Records, 1954–58; and Keeper of Public Records, 1958–60).

Biography

Born on 14 August 1893, Evans was the son of the Rev. David Evans and his wife Margaret, née Lewis. He attended Bridgend County School, the University College of Wales and then Jesus College, Oxford, earning Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Letters (BLitt) degrees. In 1915, he was commissioned into the Duke of Wellington's Regiment and served out World War I in France and Belgium.^[1]

In 1921, Evans joined the Public Record Office. In the lead up to World War II, he travelled across London to find a suitable location to which the Office's documents could be evacuated. Most were placed in hospital wards, although the Domesday Book was lodged in Shepton Mallet Gaol. He was then responsible for returning them after the war and picked up the Domesday Book himself in an unmarked van. With that done, he could focus on reorganising the Office's Museum. In 1947, he became Principal Assistant Keeper and simultaneously took up a lectureship at the School of Librarianship and Archives, University College London, where he taught administrative history and archive studies. He served in both posts until 1954, when he was appointed Deputy Keeper – the professional head of the Public Record Office. Until 1959, the Master of the Rolls had been nominal Keeper, but at the start of that year, the position was transferred to Evans who became the first civil servant to be Keeper of Public Records.^[2]

He retired the following year, but continued to serve as a member of the Advisory Council on Public Records until 1965 and as a Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts until 1980. He was a Governor of the British Film Institute, the National Library of Wales and the National Museum of Wales.^[1] In the words of The Times, "he was a records man of the old school who saw it as his job to make documents readily available to scholars, at whose disposal he also placed his own expertise".^[2] He was interested in medieval Welsh history and published Flintshire Ministers' Accounts, 1328–1352 in 1929.^[2] Evans was a Fellow and Vice-President (1956–60) of the Royal Historical Society, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1947) and a Knight Bachelor (1958). His wife, Marie Christine, was a daughter of Edwin Austin, a magistrate; before she died in 1966, the couple had two daughters. Sir David Evans died on 23 April 1987.^[1]

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