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Leo Swan

Leo Swan will long be remembered as a generous personality, a pioneering archaeologist and an encouraging teacher. He was also an airman whose energy and personality and humour illuminated whatever lecture theatre, class room or social gathering he graced, always leaving those he encountered enriched, entertained and invariably the better for having met a really great character.

Born the son of teachers in Lobinstown, north Meath, he boarded at the diocesan secondary school St. Finians in Mullingar and started as a primary teacher at St. Patricks Drumcondra. (where incidentally, he befriended Peter Danaher, a year ahead, who died in 2000. and who Leo supported during his final illness) and returned to teach at the local school but wasn’t fulfilled. His energetic and adventurous qualities won out; he first tried hotel management and then something that was to have a lasting effect in his whole life, aircraft navigation.

This led to a stint overseas with the Flying Tigers, exposure to the airborne world of the Cold War and an empathy with flying and aeroplanes. Flying he was to persist with as a hobby that he later turned to the advantage of archaeology and decades of engagement with the settlement history of early medieval Ireland.