President, 2014 –
Deputy Director
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust
41 Broad Street
Welshpool
Powys
SY21 7RR
Email: bobsilvester@cpat.org.uk The current president of the MSRG, was born and brought up in Shakespeare country, before going on to Exeter where he read history and archaeology. Staying in Devon as a professional archaeologist for a few years where his interests were primarily in the late prehistoric and Roman periods, he transferred to Norfolk in the early 1980s. Several years of working on the silts of Marshland around the Wash converted him to medieval archaeology and particularly the joys of medieval settlement. A year after the publication of Marshland (East Anglian Archaeology, 1988), he was appointed deputy director of the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust and he has remained in the conducive surroundings of east Wales ever since. Responsible for the study of medieval rural settlement in that region in a Wales-wide programme initiated by Cadw that spanned several years around 2000, he published the results in a multi-authored volume entitled Lost Farmsteads (CBA, 2006), co-authored the chapter on Wales in the MSRG’s Medieval Rural Settlement volume (Windgather Press 2012), and analysed the histories of the smaller village settlements of north-east and east Wales, again for Cadw. Other research interests include historic landscapes, church archaeology – he is one of the six diocesan archaeologists in Wales – and, more as a hobby, early estate maps.
Medieval Settlement Research Group 