On his death, Glyn Daniel described Lethbridge as "a colourful, stimulating, provocative and often controversial figure in British archaeology", who represented "one of the last of that invaluable band of dilettante scholars and devoted amateurs of whom we have had so many in Britain". Although stating that Lethbridge only emerged as a "semi-professional" for a "short time", he praised much of Lethbridge's writing for its "freshness and an eager restless sense of enquiry". An anonymously authored obituary in "The Antiquaries Journal" referred to "the strength and honesty of Lethbridge's character as a man, and the singleness of purpose that united all his work, as experimental testing of what he found by observation", seeing these as the unifying characteristics behind his divergent research interests. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, as a result of both his unorthodox ideas and his "contempt for professionalism in all fields", Lethbridge's "status as a scholar never really rose above that of an unusually lively local antiquary". His books continue to be largely ignored by academics into the 21st century.