Events
60 minute illustrated talk plus Q&A with James Wright
Britain can be justifiably proud of approximately 500,000 listed buildings. Yet over half may have been identified incorrectly. Behind a Victorian façade is a Tudor house. Underneath a Georgian frontage is a mediaeval cottage. What is now a farm was once a castle. Many buildings, hundreds of years old, are entirely unlisted. How can a nation, so obsessed with history, have missed so many ancient buildings?
James Wright’s new book,The Buildings Archaeologist, offers clues for discovering the secrets of Britain’s ancient buildings. It looks at the ways in which historic architecture has been observed, studied, and conserved. The puzzles surrounding why some buildings were listed and others overlooked will be solved. It acts as a field guide to the written records, tree-ring dating, and archaeology which help us to investigate the age, development, and social history of ancient buildings. These include houses, castles, churches, mills, factories, and warehouses hidden in plain sight.
With over a quarter of a century of field experience, James Wright explains the fascinating, enigmatic, and surprising world of The Buildings Archaeologist.
James Wright (Triskele Heritage), is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period. He is the author of Historic Building Mythbusting and The Buildings Archaeologist (The History Press).