John McNeill obituary

The Guardian

02-04-2025

My friend John McNeill, who has died aged 67 after a short illness, was one of the UK's leading scholars of romanesque architecture and sculpture. He published articles on romanesque architecture from across Europe, especially monastic buildings, with an interest in elements often overlooked: the beasts inhabiting romanesque arches were a particular passion.
Many of those publications were for the British Archaeological Association (BAA), though he produced two excellent volumes in the Blue Guides series, on the Loire and Normandy, and guidebooks for English Heritage.
Born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, John was the son of Enid (nee Burniston) and Gerry McNeill. In 1959 they moved to Retford in Nottinghamshire, where Gerry ran small businesses, assisted by Enid, and where John attended King Edward VI grammar school.
Enid had grown up in Syningthwaite Priory, North Yorkshire, a medieval farmhouse that had formerly been part of a Cistercian convent built around 1150, with the northern-most Norman doorway in a dwelling. Childhood visits there nurtured an early interest in medieval architecture for John.
This was developed at the University of East Anglia, where he studied art history from 1976, followed by a master's degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Before university he had borrowed Enid's Capri to drive across Europe, through Turkey and into Iran, the beginning of a lifetime of investigating buildings.
From the 1980s, John taught in continuing education at many institutions, including Birkbeck College, London, and Oxford University. From 1991 he also led tours across Europe, predominantly for Martin Randall Travel. Freedom from regular employment suited him.
He was secretary of the BAA from 2001, to which role he brought quiet efficiency, but also huge energy in developing projects. It was there that he met Anna Eavis, a heritage professional whom he married in 2002. The couple moved to Oxford the same year, where Anna is the chief executive of the Oxford Preservation Trust.
A gregarious man, John was fond of games, including poker, and a beer connoisseur who was as at home in the pub as in the cloister. The elegance of his shirts was also notable, surprising in a man who was otherwise very unassuming.
He was a prodigious organiser of conferences, notably a biennial international romanesque conference that met from 2010 in centres around Europe. These were where his talents were most evident. He had the gift of being able to elucidate buildings in a manner that engaged the professor and novice equally, and through his warmth he fostered in attenders a sense of being part of a family. As well as being an outstanding scholar himself, he was someone who brought out the best in those around him, especially younger researchers, at a time when the study of medieval art is increasingly marginalised.
Volumes of the conference proceedings, such as Romanesque Saints, Shrines and Pilgrimage (2020), edited by John and me, brought together contributors from across Europe and the Anglophone world, a rebuke to narrowing specialisation, and were frequently graced with one of his own articles. John continued writing and editing until the end of his life.
He is survived by Anna and their son, Freddie, and by a sister, Jane.