Agnes Conway

Agnes Ethel Conway (1885–1950) was a British historian and archaeologist who worked in the Middle East from 1929-1936. She was noted for her work with her husband George Horsfield at Petra and Kilwa, and produced detailed studies of the history of her father's castle, Allington, in Kent which had been owned by the Wyatt family in the 16th century.

Personal life

Agnes Conway was born on 2 May 1885 to William Martin Conway and Katrina Conway (née Lombard). She attended Baker Street High School and Kings College before becoming a student at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1903. She studied for a History Tripos while also having tutorials in Greek from Jane Ellen Harrison, then Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at Newnham. Her father bought Allington Castle in Kent in 1905, and began a lengthy restoration of the castle in the following years.

Agnes passed both parts of her History Tripos by 1907 and continued her tutorials in Greek with Harrison with a view to studying archaeology. She added to and catalogued her father's growing collection of photographs, working with Eugenie Sellers Strong at the British School at Rome in 1912 on this project. Admitted as a student of the British School at Athens for the 1913/1914 session, she travelled widely in Greece and the Balkans in 1914 with a friend, Evelyn Radford, who had also attended Newnham. Conway published an account of the journey, entitled A Ride Through the Balkans, on Classic Ground with a Camera in 1917.