Robert Higham

Runner-up for the book award in the 1994 British Archaeological Awards, Timber Castles is the standard work on the subject and hugely influential in its field. Its reissue makes available again this much sought after text with a new preface by Robert Higham. Some of the greatest medieval castles survive only as earthworks and in pictures and written accounts . . . because they were made of timber. Robert Higham and Philip Barker, who excavated in detail the timber castle at Hen Domen in Wales, have brought together evidence of all kinds to produce the first comprehensive survey of this neglected and little-known type of fortification.

Britain's town walls have been neglected. For the first time the authors draw together a variety of evidence to reveal the chronologies, functions, structures and social significance of urban defences. They show that the walls and their related structures are a mixture of military pragmatism, commercial logic and symbolism.

Runner-up for the book award in the 1994 British Archaeological Awards, Timber Castles is the standard work on the subject and hugely influential in its field. Its reissue makes available again this much sought after text with a new preface by Robert Higham. Some of the greatest medieval castles survive only as earthworks and in pictures and written accounts . . . because they were made of timber. Robert Higham and Philip Barker, who excavated in detail the timber castle at Hen Domen in Wales, have brought together evidence of all kinds to produce the first comprehensive survey of this neglected and little-known type of fortification.

The motte and bailey castle at Hen Domen, Montgomery was occupied from the late eleventh century until c.1300. Excavations here lasted from 1960 to 1992, and remain the most detailed examination of this type of site to date. This volume marks the final stage in the publication of excavations and fieldwork carried out at the site, containing a summary of an earlier work published in 1982 by the Royal Archaeological Institute, and a full account of the project's findings since 1980.Its principal contents are the buildings whose foundations were recovered in the bailey and on the motte, the artefactual and environmental evidence and the castle's medieval landscape context. The book is profusely illustrated with drawings and photographs, including artist's reconstructions of the evolution of the site.