Historical and archaeological research work carried out at the turn of the last century emphasised the importance of castles other than the great stone monuments whose architectural study was already well established. Crucial to this advance of castle studies was the work of Ella Armitage whose published articles in the first decade culminated in the seminal work ‘Early Norman Castles in the British Isles’, (1912).

Dr. Robert Higham, the founder of the Castle Studies Group in 1987, writing in Timber Castles, (1992 & 2004)* stated: “The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles refined the dating of castles generally and in particular showed that mottes were Norman Castles, not as previously argued by some, the burghs of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This great book, which acknowledged the debt to Pitt-Rivers, Allcroft and other earlier workers, laid the general foundations of timber castle studies by putting their earthworks in a proper historical context and arguing the likely timber origins of many castles whose visible remains are of stone. ‘These earthworks, wrote Mrs Armitage, ‘are castles in the usual sense of the word; that is, the private fortified residences of great landowners.’ In passing, Mrs Armitage also observed other points crucial to the subject. For example, despite her insistence on the importance of mottes she also emphasised the importance of enclosure castles……Not least of her achievements was pointing out the relevance of contemporary documentary evidence to the study of sites whose timber superstructures had long vanished”.