Prof Robert Silvester
Visiting Professor
I studied archaeology in joint honours with history at the University of Exeter, graduating in 1972. After a stint as an archaeological field officer in Devon, and then for twelve months on the re-assessment of the Meare East lake village for the Somerset Levels Project, I worked in Norfolk for the Fenland Survey for seven years. In 1989, moved across country to Wales where I was deputy director of the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust until my retirement in February 2016.
Almost inevitably, my research interests have transmuted during a professional life that has extended over more than four decades. In my years in Devon, Iron Age and Roman settlement were major interests, but the move to Norfolk fostered a change both in approach from fieldwork and excavation to fieldwalking – six years of it! – and an intensifying interest in the archaeology of the historic era and the development of the historic landscape. Leaving the lowlands of East Anglia for the hills of Wales involved a further shift, particularly towards fieldwork projects in the central and northern uplands of the country, but also a range of other projects so numerous that I’ve almost certainly forgotten some of them, though most have been embedded in the medieval and post-medieval eras. An assessment of all the historic churches in east and north-east Wales in the 1990s was instrumental in me taking on the role of archaeologist for the diocese of St Asaph; and more recently being appointed as one of the seven commissioners on the Cathedrals and Churches Commission which advises the Representative Body of the Church in Wales on heritage-related issues.
Another Cadw-funded programme in Wales focussed on deserted rural settlements of medieval and early post-medieval date, and a series of papers on the subject led to my doctorate from Exeter and, currently, my presidency of the Medieval Settlement Research Group. Other roles at present include being a trustee of the Powysland Club, Wales’ oldest county society, and reviews editor for the journal Archaeologia Cambrensis, though I recently gave up a similar role for the journal Landscape History after more than twenty years in the post.
In the world of churches, my research interests focus on a long-standing interest in eighteenth-century memorials in the churches of east Wales, and a more recent appreciation of the carvings in some church roofs of north-east Wales. With medieval settlements, it is the development of such sites in the landscapes of Wales and the English border counties that take my interest. Finally evolving from my work in the Norfolk fens thirty years ago, the value of historic cartography and particularly estate maps in unravelling the landscape has become a major pre-occupation and has led to an interest too in the maps themselves and the surveyors who compiled them.
Silvester, R. J., 2023. Medieval settlement and the landscape of the Llynfi Basin in Breconshire, Brycheiniog 54, 85-115.
Silvester, R. J., 2023 William Hitchcock, an eighteenth-century land surveyor working in north-west Wales, Journal Merioneth Historical and Record Society 19.2, 129-44.
Silvester, R. J. 2023. The Condover Survey of 1767 and the atlases of John Probert, Trans Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 98, 77-99.
Silvester, R. J with Jones, N. W. and Hankinson, R., 2022. Strata Marcella revisited: survey and recording 2011-2021. Montgomeryshire Collections 110, 1-11.
Silvester, R. J. 2022. Shrunken settlements in Shropshire, Trans Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 97, 97-112.
Silvester, R. J. 2022. The Shropshire maps of Basil Woodd and John Adams: a postscript, Trans Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 94, 113-4.
Silvester, R. J., 2022. John Davies and the Black Mountains survey of 1759, Brycheiniog 53, 59-87.
Silvester R J, with Hankinson, R and Jones, N.W. 2022. Commercial nineteenth-century rabbit farming in the Brecon Beacons, Archaeologia Cambrensis 171, 245-63.
Silvester, R. J., 2021. Shrunken settlements in west Shropshire: the All Souls 1602 map of Alberbury, Medieval Settlement Research 36, 40-48.
Silvester, R. J., 2021. Presenting the church in the 19th century & Illustrating church furniture and fittings, in H. James and Toby Driver (eds) Illustrating the Past in Wales: a Celebration of 175 years of Archaeologia Cambrensis, Carmarthen: Cambrian Archaeological Association, 56-9.
Silvester, R. J. and Cavill, P. 2021. Basil Woodd's early eighteenth-century map of Shropshire. Trans Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 96, 53-62.
Comeau, R and Silvester, R. 2021. 'Transhumant settlement in medieval Wales; the hafod' in Dixon, P. and Theune, C. (eds) Ruralia XIII. Seasonal Settlement in the Medieval and Early Modern Countryside, Leiden: Sidestone Press, 113-23.
Silvester, R. J. 2020. Eighteenth-century wall memorials in the southern Welsh Marches, Church Monuments 35, 155-86.
Silvester, R. J., 2020. Isaac Messeder and the survey of an eighteenth-century Montgomeryshire estate, Montgomeryshire Collections, 108, 139-54.
Silvester, R. J. and Hawkins, J., 2020. William Williams, an eighteenth-century land surveyor, Archaeologia Cambrensis 169, 263-290.
Silvester, R. J., 2020. Robert Clive, John Probert and the growth of the Walcot estate, Trans Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 94, 35-48.
- BA (Exeter)
- PhD (Exeter)
- FSA