Born 19 May 1949; died 15 October 2024
Peter Murray, who died suddenly in Edinburgh in October 2024, was a historian and university administrator who used both those skills over the years in the service of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Born in Annan in May 1949, he moved aged two to St Andrews where his father was a bank manager. St Andrews became a much-loved place; a special delight was attending the annual Lammas Market there, which he still spoke fondly of in older age. Not initially academic, he thrived after joining Madras College where his passion for history bloomed, gaining him the Coronation medal for History in 1968.
He stayed in St Andrews to read Medieval History, achieving first class honours. It was there he met his wife, Anne, then wardrobe mistress of the University’s theatre company. They were to be an inseparable couple until Anne’s sadly early death from cancer in 2006.
Peter followed his St Andrews degree with a PhD at Edinburgh University as a Carnegie Scholar, focussing on the Scottish medieval church with a thesis on: The position and role of the ecclesiastical bailie in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Scotland. As part of his research, Peter spent a year – one of the happiest of his life, he would say – at the British School in Rome, working at the Vatican archives.
Peter and Anne lived for a while in Surrey, with Peter working in London for the Council for National Academic Awards and Anne as deputy academic registrar at Royal Holloway University; then on to Leamington Spa while Peter was deputy academic registrar for Warwick University.
In 1985, Peter was delighted to be offered the post of academic registrar at the University of Aberdeen, this return to Scotland giving him the much desired opportunity to raise his daughter, Catriona, in the land of his birth. Here he was to spend the rest of his professional life, first as academic registrar and then deputy secretary to the university. Diligent and dedicated, he was described as a rock by the University Secretary. He gained a reputation for precision and perfectionism, the wielding of his famous red pen becoming feared throughout the University. In retirement he pulled out the red pen again, wielding it on his daughter’s PhD text while proof-reading the full 80,000 words.
He cared about the University of Aberdeen with a passion and promoted it whenever he could. This writer remembers being – only half-jokingly – upbraided by him for sporting in public a carrier bag other than the one emblazoned with the University of Aberdeen arms with which he had presented her. He wanted both the institution and the students he worked with to succeed and flourish, a passion he took into his final role at Newbattle Abbey where he worked to open up access to higher education.
Throughout his professional life Peter maintained his involvement with the study of Scottish history, amongst other things through membership of the Scottish Medievalists and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He was elected a fellow of the Society in 1979, serving on Council from 1996 to 1999. He joined the committee of the then North-East Section of the Society in May 1997, becoming Vice Chair in 2000 and Chair from 2003 – 2006. As Chair, Peter oversaw a revision of the Section’s rules in 2004, including the change of name to Aberdeen and North-East Section. As Chair he also served as an ex-officio member of Council during his term. After a gap following Anne’s death, he again served on the committee from May 2009 – May 2012. He would have been sorry to see the subsequent disbanding of the Section, although recognising its redundancy in light of the online availability of the Society’s lectures since 2020.
In retirement, Peter divided his time between Aberdeen, Edinburgh and the family home he had retained in St Andrews, where he actively supported the St Andrews Preservation Trust, serving as a Trustee from 2012 – 2019 and a Vice-Chair for part of that time. He spent much of his final years in Edinburgh, becoming a regular patron of the Traverse and the Festival Theatre and continuing to indulge his passion for auctions, bidding on a wide range of art and antiques while adding to his ever-expanding book collection. Latterly visitors to the Edinburgh flat had great difficulty finding anywhere to sit in face of the multitude of volumes stacked around him. He had eclectic reading tastes, equally partial to a Lee Child or Val McDermaid as to his more weighty volumes on history and politics.
Despite Peter’s sense of seriousness and responsibility at work, he could also display a child-like and often mischievous spirit. He was prone to sudden great enthusiasms: after he attended the hit musical Hamilton a total of ten times, staff at the Festival Theatre marked this appreciation by presenting him with a poster, signed by the cast, on the closing night. In his memory, Catriona and her partner intend sponsoring a theatre seat to commemorate the happiness the show brought to him.
Peter will be remembered as a quiet, serious, man, but one with a quirky, impish, sense of humour. The Society’s Murray Prize for History, which Peter endowed in memory of Anne, can now serve to maintain his memory also, and to stand as a mark of his devotion to Scottish history and learning.
This tribute could not have been written without the generous help of Catriona Murray and the detailed contributions of Dr Simon Gilmour FSAScot and Neil Curtis FSAScot.
By Alexandra (Lekky) Shepherd MA MCIfA FSAScot
Image Credit: Catriona Murray and Craig Evans
