Stephen Clarke

This book spans fifty years of a life in archaeology but the story opens in 1986 with an extraordinary discovery on a building site. Two metres of Norman and medieval house floors, overlying part of the Roman town of Blestium, were unearthed and destroyed in the main street of Monmouth, on the southern border between England and Wales.

The national importance of the discoveries in Monnow Street was immediately apparent but so was the fact that many other sites were now in imminent danger – as redevelopments spread rapidly along the street.

Within weeks, amateur archaeologists were standing alone between developers, who were supported by the County Council, and the devastation of some of the best-reserved urban remains seen in a small town. Members of Monmouth Archaeological Society and the town’s Action Group, whilst excavating where they could, were a regular sight, protesting on the streets and in the media. They organised demonstrations at council meetings and picketed the premises of a developer’s agents in three counties; the instructed solicitors and a barrister and bought shares in the Kwiksave supermarket chain in order to attend company meetings following the illegal demolition of the firm’s Grade II listed Building.

The society was the first in Britain to win a professional building groundwork contract in order to save historic remains and one if its projects in Monnow Street became a major tourist attraction, visited by around a million people, when a local developer allowed the Society to carry out rescue excavations inside his large street frontage shop for 10 years.

For its rescue work, Monmouth Archaeological Society won The Pitt Rivers Award for the best project by independents in Britain. It also received the highest Award in British Archaeology The Silver Trowel – presented for the greatest initiative in archaeology and the author of this book was made an M.B.E. for his part in that initiative.

2008 Hardcover

0955824210 Copyright Forest Bookshop Ltd., 2008. All Rights Reserved.