The son of a Church of England vicar, he was educated at Uppingham School and read classics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, on a scholarship.

He served in the East Lancashire Regiment during the First World War, where he was mentioned in dispatches three times and acted as deputy governor of the British military prison at Salonika in Greece.

After the war, Heurtley studied classical archaeology at Oriel College, Oxford, under Percy Gardner and with Stanley Casson, the assistant director of the British School at Athens (BSA).

In 1923, Heurtley succeeded Casson as the BSA's assistant director, and also assumed the role of its librarian; he held both posts until his dismissal, on financial grounds, in 1932.

[10] After the war, Heurtley moved to Oriel College, Oxford, to take a diploma in classical archaeology, studying under Percy Gardner and with Stanley Casson, the assistant director of the BSA and another former officer of the East Lancashire Regiment.

[7] He excavated in Macedonia with Casson in the spring of that year, at the site of Chauchitza, which had been discovered and hastily studied in December 1917 during the construction of wartime dugouts.

[13] He carried out a survey in 1923 with his fellow Craven student William Linsdell Cuttle to find possible excavation sites in western Macedonia and the Chalkidiki peninsula.

[22] In the spring of 1928, Heurtley excavated with Ralegh Radford as his assistant director at Hagios Mamas and Molyvopyrgo in the Chalkidiki, directing four students of the BSA including John Pendlebury.

In the same year, he worked at Vinča-Belo Brdo in Yugoslavia, under the site's discoverer, Miloje Vasić, and on his own excavations at Ithaca, which he conducted from August to October with funding from the diplomat, poet and politician Rennell Rodd.

[1]The BSA announced in November 1931 that Heurtley's position as Assistant Director would be abolished, owing to financial constraints brought on by the Greek economic crisis of the early 1930s.

[33] Shortly before the First World War, Heurtley travelled to County Kerry to study the Irish language, where he met Eileen Mary O'Connell; the two married in 1914.

[15] Heurtley converted to Catholicism, his wife's religion: he was later accused of doing so in order to marry her, but explained his decision as a result of being impressed by the beauty of the Baroque churches of Austria, where he had holidayed before the First World War.

When publishing the results of his excavations at Ithaca, Heurtley insisted that the word "Madonna" be removed from the description of an ivory figurine of a monkey found at the site.

[35] Heurtley travelled widely, both with Eileen and alone, and generally spent his summer holidays visiting museums and archaeological sites in Eastern Europe.