This monograph details both the project fieldwork (comprising excavations, test-pitting and extensive geophysical and other surveys), and data from developer-led interventions and other previously unpublished excavations in the town’s historic core. The volume traces the pre-town archaeology of Wallingford – from late Iron Age landscape to early Saxon cemetery – and then analyses the town’s physical and social evolution from Saxon burh to chartered borough, assessing defences, churches, housing, markets, material culture, coinage, communications and hinterland. Core questions running through the volume relate to the roles of the River Thames and of royal power in shaping Wallingford’s fortunes and identity and in explaining the town’s severe and early decline. (Maney Publishing)