Charles Phillips was born on 24 April 1901, the son of Harold and Mary Elizabeth. His parents had met in London and were married on 14 October 1899. Harold Phillips had started to suffer from depression around 1893, and despite a number of "crises" during the short engagement, as Charles Phillips would later describe them, apparently no efforts were made to apprise his fiancée's family of his condition; nevertheless, none of her relatives showed up for the wedding. The couple had two sons and a daughter, with Charles being the youngest. Despite attempts at therapy, Harold Phillips killed himself on 30 January 1907. For about a year Charles Phillips was sent to live with his mother's parents in Ardington, after which he moved back in with his mother in Henley-on-Thames. There he attended Henley Grammar school, which he termed "a rather difficult time at the rather decayed" school; once his mother obtained a diploma in dairying from Reading University and moved to tend to the dairy at Arundel Castle, he lodged with an old friend of his father, visiting his family for the holidays. From 1909 to 1910 Phillips was educated at Littlehampton Commercial School, his tuition paid for by the Freemasons of which his father had been a member, and by their graces he was installed in the Royal Masonic School for Boys in Bushey, Hertfordshire, in January 1911. Phillips was the only new boy assigned to his junior house. He characterised the headmaster of the other as a "sadist" who was forced out two years later due to a "scandal." His own time at the school lasted until 1919. This included a stint at Stonehenge at the end of World War I, when a shortage of workers necessitated the use of older schoolboys to take in the harvest nearby. His time digging potatoes was short, for twenty-eight of the thirty schoolboys came down with diarrhoea. Phillips was not afflicted, and together with the other well schoolboy and an Army cook, spent days digging latrines. While home for Christmas holidays that year Phillips spent time exploring Burgh Castle, collecting pieces of Romano-British pottery that were placed in the school library. On leaving school the following term, Selwyn College, Cambridge granted him an exhibition in history.
Phillips was in charge of the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, widely considered the grave of the Anglo-Saxon king Rædwald of East Anglia, from 10 July to 25 August 1939. Excavation of a large burial mound had begun in early May under the leadership of Basil Brown, who the previous year had opened several smaller mounds nearby. On 11 May, the remainder of an iron ship rivet was found, and seven days later Guy Maynard, the then curator of Ipswich Museum, was informed of the "indications of a large vessel" remaining in the soil. Phillips, then a fellow at Selwyn College and working on excavations at Little Woodbury, was alerted to the discovery by Maynard; visiting the site on 6 June, Phillips said "it could be the ship of a King". Due to his experience with excavations the Sutton Hoo ship-burial was put under his command. With the ship cleared but for the burial chamber, he arrived at Sutton Hoo on 8 July, and began work two days later.
Awards and honors
He was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1967 for his contributions to the topography and mapping of Early Britain.
