W. J. Varley

[6][nb 1] Varley lectured in geography at the University of Liverpool in the 1930s, where his notable students included Margaret Jones née Owen (1916–2001).

[22] He classified the site as a palisade-barrow, similar to the Dutch examples at Calais Wold and Langedijk, but stressed its unique layout.

The inner ramparts were found to consist of sand and carbonised oak timbers protected by a stone cap and revetments (retaining walls), which Varley compared with the murus gallicus method of construction, typical of Gaul.

"[31] Modern archaeologists Richard Mason and Rachel Pope describe his reports on Maiden Castle as showing "fairly meticulous archaeological reasoning".

Four major and seven minor trenches were dug, with investigations focusing on two potential entrances, a junction between parts of the earthworks, and the area known as Merrick's Hill, where buildings were visible at the surface.

[11][36][37][32] Mason and Pope speculate that many of Varley's site records might have been lost during the war and that the 1950 paper might have been based partly on memory.

[39] Varley excavated the Iron Age hillfort at Castle Hill, Almondbury, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, over six seasons in 1939, 1946–47, 1969–70 and 1972.

[14] Varley's death meant that his results were never published in full, but some of his finds, together with a model of the hillfort, are on permanent display at Huddersfield's Tolson Museum,[41][42] which also holds many of his records from the Castle Hill site.

[44][45][46][47] Varley never finished the excavation and his full report failed to appear in his lifetime, being published by Gwilym Hughes in 1996, twenty years after his death.

[46] His later publications include work on Wat's Dyke at Mynydd Isa in Wales, and Barmston and Holderness crannogs, Giants Hill, Swine, and Woodhall Manor, Beverley in East Yorkshire.

[50] Robert W. Steel, in a review for African Affairs, describes it as "a most useful survey" and "an example both of what observant geographers can write and of what the publishers that are alive to the educational needs of Africa today can produce.

Prehistoric Cheshire (1940), co-authored with John Wilfrid Jackson, contains then-unpublished material on Eddisbury hillfort as well as Varley's reappraisal of his earlier Maiden Castle work.

[55][39] His later work, Cheshire Before the Romans (1964), although intended as an updated replacement for the 1940 book, broadened its focus to review the whole of the UK and in particular his hillfort excavations in other counties.

During his time in Ghana, he published a survey of the country's castles and forts, constructed by European colonists between the 15th and 18th centuries; it was the first paper to appear in the journal of the Gold Coast & Togoland Historical Society.

[8] He later married Mary Varley (1910–2006), a teacher, photographer and artist from near Halifax, West Yorkshire, whom he met while she was teaching at Coleg Harlech, Wales, having been evacuated there in 1940.