Francis Bertram Welch

Francis Bertram Welch (1876-1950) supervised the British Museum's excavation of tombs at Kouklia in March 1899, and his letter to the Museum is the main record of it¹. Kiely describes him as a young scholar seconded from the British School at Athens¹. He had a degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, and held the Craven University Fellowship at the School in 1898-1900².

He began work at Kouklia on 6 March 1899 with Percy Christian, the Museum's agent, and the government superintendent Constantinos Theodorides, who records 22 days of work. The team avoided the sanctuary and hoped for intact Late Bronze Age tombs, but found disturbed ones, mostly Cypro-Geometric to Cypro-Classical, and kept few records. The Museum registered 27 items from the dig, including three large terracotta statuettes of a goddess with uplifted arms and a miniature amphora with syllabic signs¹. In April he took part in the Museum's two-week season at Klavdhia, near Larnaca. Reeve says he led it; Ulbrich and Kiely say he assisted^3,4. Christian was in Egypt just before Greek Easter, so Welch asked Claude Cobham for 50 pounds to pay the workmen, then went to the Karpas with Gregorios Antoniou. He wrote to A. S. Murray on 16 June 1899 from the British School at Athens¹.

Kiely notes that Welch applied to the Chief Secretary for permission to export some of the unwanted Kouklia finds to England for himself¹. In 1920-22 he was Vice-Consul attached to the Passport Control Office in Athens and catalogued the Finlay Papers at the School².