Donald Gordon obituary

The Guardian

04-02-2025

My father, Donald Gordon, who has died aged 90, enjoyed two successful and influential careers, first in education and then in Roman history, as he put Trimontium, Scotland's largest Roman fort, back on the map.
Donald established the Trimontium Trust in the early 1990s, following an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to move the route of the Melrose bypass away from the Roman site, which neighboured Donald's village of Newstead, in the Borders.
He set up a self-funding museum in Melrose, and started site walks and organised lectures – from leading academics including Kenneth St Joseph, the Cambridge archaeologist who specialised in aerial photography, and authors such as the historical crime novelist Lindsey Davis – bringing people to Melrose to learn about its fascinating Roman past. All 32 copies of his Trimontium Trumpet journal for trust members have been catalogued in the National Library of Scotland.
Born in Bellshill, North Lanarkshire, to Margaret (nee Fraser), a shop worker, and George Gordon, who worked for the electricity board, Donald won a scholarship to Hamilton academy, going on to study classics at Glasgow University. There he won the prestigious Cowan Blackstone medal, a public oral competition on Latin texts, before graduating in 1956.
Donald then attended Jordanhill Teaching Training College and became a classics teacher at his old school. A popular teacher, he nevertheless had a growing ambition to influence education beyond the classroom, and in 1963 was appointed assistant director of education in West Lothian.
A decade later he became director of education for Selkirkshire, and after local government reorganisation, in 1975 he was made depute director of education for the Borders – a post he would hold until retirement in 1995. This role enabled him to modernise schooling and champion teachers across the region.
He met Ishbel Johnston, a primary school teacher, on a bus home from Glasgow in 1957. They married in 1961, and had two children, Alison and me. Moving to Newstead in 1973, Donald and Ishbel became elders of Melrose parish church, where Donald also led the Sunday school and drove the minibus for elderly parishioners.
He was secretary of the Melrose community council for 15 years, and also sang in the Melrose Operatic Society for 25 years, the Eildon Singers and, latterly, the church choir.
Well into his 80s, Donald threw himself into completing a project that he had been researching for more than two decades – compiling the letters of James Curle, the Melrose solicitor and archaeologist who had carried out the first excavations in Newstead. Revealing Trimontium was published in 2023. His co-author, Fraser Hunter, concluded that Donald had 'served the Roman legacy of the area tremendously well; without him, the site would have remained largely ignored'.
In 2008, Donald was appointed MBE.
He is survived by Ishbel, Alison and me, and by six grandchildren.