The Palace and Abbey of Westminster provide one of the most familiar images in the world. From its beginnings on an island surrounded by the Rivers Thames and Tyburn more than 7000 years ago, the site became the most important centre of English history from the 11th century onwards. The palace, which started as one of many royal residences, became the principal home of the English monarchs until it was damaged by fire during the reign of Henry VIII. The former royal chapel of St Stephen became the home of the House of Commons and the palace, with the rise in the power of Parliament in the mid...

Excavations at 2-4 Old Church Street revealed prehistoric activity, a Roman rural settlement, and medieval gardens and domestic occupation associated with a medieval manor house, although most of the evidence for settlement related to the post-medieval period, when Chelsea changed from a village to a riverside resort and finally a suburb. A churchyard occupied the southern half of the site; here were recovered the skeletons of 290 parishioners buried between c.1700 and the mid 19th century, including two members of the Hand family who ran the Chelsea Bun House. The report considers various...

Until now the evidence for London's Early and Middle Saxon rural settlement and economy has received scant attention. This monograph provides a long-awaited overview of the subject, drawing on the results of six decades of archaeological fieldwork since the war, in addition to historical and place-name evidence. Some of the material has been published before and will be familiar to the reader, but much of it has only been available as site archives or unpublished reports, and at best briefly summarised as notes in excavation round-ups. This synthesis therefore forms an indispensible guide to...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The development of the major settlement of Lundenwic in the late 7th century AD marked the rebirth of London as a town. In the following century the emporium served as a seaport for the landlocked kingdom of Mercia and played a significant role in the maritime trade of north-west Europe. This monograph provides the first detailed overview of the archaeological evidence for the trading port, placing it in its regional, national and international context. The results of fieldwork at 18 locations on the site of the former Middle Saxon settlement are followed by essays on various aspects of the...

Excavations in Syon Park, Brentford, have made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of this Roman rural settlement on the London-Silchester road, by a ford across the Thames. The site yielded a well-dated sequence - from the mid 1st to early 5th century AD - including occupation deposits and two 2nd-century timber buildings destroyed by fire, as well as details of the main road and adjacent field system. These and a large assemblage of finds, including a surgical instrument and a roundel depicting the Medusa, provide a rare glimpse of life in the countryside in the hinterland of...

From the age of ten, the author was determined to be involved with African wildlife. This memoir recounts how he was able to fulfil this dream, travelling through Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Egypt, as well as the Yemen, which biologically is almost Africa. He tells of being captured by Eritrean guerillas, seeing Gelada baboons in the Ethiopian highlands and the huge migrations of zebra and wildebeest in the Serengeti, doing research on termites in Darfur as well as assessing agricultural problems in the highest fastnesses of the Yemeni mountains, gazing in awe at...