Background
Megaw was born on 20 July 1910 at Portobello House nursing home in Portobello, Dublin, Ireland.
architect anthropologist archaeologist
Megaw was born on 20 July 1910 at Portobello House nursing home in Portobello, Dublin, Ireland.
Between 1924 and 1928, he was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, a boys boarding school. He graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Arts (Bachelor) degree which was later promoted to Master of Arts (Master of Arts (Cantab)) degree.
He specialised in Byzantine churches. He served as Director of the British School at Athens from 1962 to 1968. He went on to read architecture at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.
Megaw never held an academic post at a university.
He spent 75 years "working on the study and preservation of the monuments of the Christian East". He first joined the British School at Athens as Walston Student in 1931, to study Byzantine architecture.
He served as the first Director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus between 1935 and 1960. With the independence of Cyprus form British Rule in 1960, he spent two short, successive posts at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington District of Columbia, United States of America and at the Byzantine Institute of America in Istanbul, Turkey.
He served as Director of the British School at Athens from 1962 to 1968.
Following his early retirement from the directorship, he joined the Harvard Centre for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks as a visiting scholar. He spent the reaming years of the 1960s and the 1970s splitting his time between Cyprus and the United States. Megaw died of cancer on 28 June 2006 at his London home in Hampstead.
He was cremated on 20 July 2006 at Golders Green Crematorium, Golders Green, London.