were recorded with fine line drawings or watercolors, but generally recording was minimal or of very low quality throughout Europe.

Some early medieval settlements were located and excavated in Germany, notably those defended with earthworks. These were linked with historical campaigns and conflicts, especially those between the Romans and Germans and between the Saxons and Franks. Excavation led to typological classification of the fortifications by German archaeologist Carl Schuchhardt from the 1880s.

National legislation and administrative structures for the protection of monuments, such as the Service des Monuments Historiques in France (founded in 1830), began during the nineteenth century, and the conservation of individual buildings, with reference to the medieval period, was usually the primary concern of such organizations. An unusual development was that of Carcassonne in southern France, where attempts were made to protect a whole quarter of the town, although doing so involved extensive construction in a style considered appropriate by the supervisor of the restoration Viollet-le-Duc. Elsewhere, medieval properties came under state care by one means or another. Many ruined churches had been passed to the board of works in Dublin when the Church in Ireland was disestablished in 1869, and in England, legislation to protect monuments was first enacted in 1882, although some castles and palaces were already under state care.

In Ireland, much survey was undertaken, helped by the high quality of the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps of the country published from the 1840s. Many significant regional surveys of early medieval earthen ring forts, stone cashels, and promontory forts were published, in which other later medieval earthwork sites such as mottes (mounds) and moats were also noted. In England, Scotland, and Wales, the Ordnance Survey subsequently carried out detailed mapping, again noting many earthwork sites and the presence of ruins, often of medieval date.

Later medieval churches and monasteries were popular subjects of investigation. More frequent observations were made in Scandinavia, including some for Lund Cathedral in Sweden, which were recorded during restoration work from the 1830s onward. Likewise in Norway, Trondheim Cathedral and the wooden stave churches were recognized as being in need of preservation and restoration. In Sweden the Munkeliv monastery in Bergen and ecclesiastical structures in Oslo were examined, as were ecclesiastical structures in Trondheim and Bergen in Norway. In Finland, the Franciscan church at Kåkar was excavated by K.A. Bomansson, and the Birgittine convent of Nödendal was studied by R. Hausen. In Germany, a national monuments commission founded in 1835 led to the publication of inventories of monuments of artistic and architectural merit. The construction of architectural typologies, dated where it was considered appropriate by links to documentary sources, was undertaken across Germany and Austria.

Although walls could be stripped of plaster, excavation was not a research tool. In Great Britain, many monasteries were investigated by trenching to reveal wall lines and to allow the reconstruction on paper of the monastic plans, and cathedrals and churches were also often excavated, frequently in association with building works. Here, the Gothic revival led to the extensive restoration of a large numbers of parish churches and cathedrals and a few castles. Such work caused a reaction to excessive interference with standing fabric, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was founded in 1877 by the pre-Raphaelite artist and conservation leader William Morris.

Castles often attracted attention, largely as architectural subjects although occasionally as sites for the excavation of finds and site clearance. German excavations began in the early nineteenth century, and important publications had begun to appear by the middle of the century. The results of work on Castle Tannenberg were published in 1850 by J. V. Hefner and J.W. Wolf, and C.A. von Cohausen used excavation evidence to ascertain details about the Ingelheim Palace published in 1852–1853. Detailed architectural study of the building was begun by Clemen in 1888, and an overview of German castles was produced by Piper in 1896. In