Design of an artist’s book documenting a year long project that included the creation
of a full-scale cast of an archeological trench.

Simon Callery worked alongside archeologists excavating a Bronze Age ditch and
an Iron Age hill fort on the chalk Ridgeway (one of the oldest trackways in Europe) in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.

The book includes a series of source photographs made by the artist of a number of archeological digs, along with the final installation of the trench sculpture and selected paintings at Dover Castle Barracks. This is the last building before the chalk escarpment dramatically reveals itself on the nearby cliffs below.


‘There are many things I like about the Segsbury Project book. What I like the most is that it encourages you to slow down, to take time and to look carefully.

I can see a strong connection, a shared language, between the design of the book and the subject of the book. A concern with materiality, with image quality, and the carefully controlled pace of image to text is clear as you turn the pages. The result is a publication that is not just to be read, but also to be experienced.’ Simon Callery, 2025.


Essays by art critic Michael Archer, novelist Tracy Chevalier and Chief Archeologist at English Heritage, David Miles
Photography by Simon Callery, John Riddy and Andrew Watson
Edited by Paul Bonaventura

Published by English Heritage, Henry Moore Foundation and Oxford University

280 x 220 mm / 64 pp