This handsome publication was a joint effort between the publishers and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW). All three parties concerned deserve congratulations, the book building, as it does, on the author’s similar treatment of Montgomeryshire, published in 2011.
After an overview of the county, ‘the land between the Wye and the Severn’, and the advantages and disadvantages of aerial photography, followed by an outline of the prehistoric and later periods as reflected in the county’s archaeology, the book is then divided into four main sections, with a short section at the end with some fine views of monuments in winter, such as the round barrow, hillfort and post-medieval quarrying on the Whimble, above New Radnor. The aerial views of Radnorshire take in the east, north east, south and the north west. The east covers Presteigne, the Walton Basin and Radnor Forest, and it is worth mentioning here that the Walton Basin has also had its own publication by CPAT, written by the then Director of that Trust (Britnell Reference Britnell2013), emphasising that in Britain this area is one of the wealthiest in terms of cropmark archaeology. To illustrate this in the book under review, Musson provides a drawing (illus 23) to highlight the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman archaeology evident from the aerial images. Also in the east we have a clear view of the marching camps at Walton, a Roman signal station, the grid pattern of New Radnor’s medieval town, the motte and bailey at Kinnerton, and Monaughty, the only surviving Elizabethan mansion in the county.
The images of the uplands of the north east, with Knighton and Knucklas, vary from a cluster of barrows at Rhiw Porthnant and the relatively unknown Knighton Castle, to upland settlements and pillow mounds representing rabbit farming of uncertain date. The south has a range of hillforts, castles, churches and upland settlements, but one of the most interesting sites is the early medieval moated enclosure of Cwrt Llechrhyd, with its C14 date centred on ad 750 to 1040. In the north west there is a range of Roman sites, including marching and practice camps, but the most spectacular views are of the Elan Valley reservoirs, and especially that of Caban-goch, where low water levels at a time of drought revealed the drowned mansion and walled garden of Nant Gwyllt, the house that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley tried to acquire in the early nineteenth century.
The reviewer found the aerial views held by CPAT and RCAHMW invaluable for his work on the earthwork castles for the new edition of Powys in the series ‘The Buildings of Wales’ (Scourfield and Haslam 2013), of which Radnorshire formed a part. The majority of the images held by CPAT were taken by Chris Musson and Alex Gibson, Fellows, with Nigel Jones, while those held by the RCAHMW were by Musson and Toby Driver, also a Fellow. One image of 1969 comes from the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography (p 80), illustrating a landscape that includes a post-medieval homestead and pillow mounds, but due to deep ploughing since that date all evidence of the archaeology has all but been removed.
Although some of the illustrations could have been clearer, such as one view of Offa’s Dyke, for those not familiar with the county and its archaeology, this book will serve as an excellent introduction.
