Some things aren't built to last and their relatively short life-span can make them seem little more than ghostly images, fleetingly half-remembered, but soon to be gone forever.

In this wonderful 170-page volume are some of those precious wooden homes from the past that have somehow managed to survive long enough to be captured for posterity by author Dale Butler.

But even in the years between the start of this project and its fruition as a lavish and glossy book destined to find its way into the homes of residents and visitors alike, some of these fragile dwellings are no more.

Indeed, the first wooden home featured is a delightful strawberry and cream painted two-bedroom cottage in Cut Road in St. George's that was built in the 1930s from wood salvaged from a sunken schooner. Its last residents departed in September 5, 2003 and the house was blown apart by Hurricane Fabian the following day.

Such is the fate for many of the wooden houses that have been built over the years. It was the destructive hurricanes of 1712 and 1715 and the devastation they wreaked across the Island that saw the large-scale switch from wooden house construction to stone buildings.

Despite this, as is noted in Mr. Butler's book, wooden homes have been part of the Bermudian story throughout the Island's settled history, up to and including today.

In this polished and delightfully stylised opus, Mr. Butler and fellow photographers Gitte Brandenburg and Ziva Santop have recorded of all the wooden houses they could find on the Island, from east to west, in and around the first few years of the 21st Century.

There are even a few evocative images of wood-built sheds, commercial buildings and even a Sunday School.

Architect Ian Gordon has added notes to explain the architectural properties of each building, many displaying a variety of styles ranging from pure Bermudian, to unmistakably West Indies, English and North American stylistic designs.

The quality of the photographs is matched by the presentation of the book with its colour and high quality gloss pages throughout.

Here and there the reader will find small snippets and anecdotes that give a tiny insight into the history of some of the properties. If there was to be any suggestion on how to make this publication even better it would be to see an expansion of the background and history of the houses, who lived in them and what they were used for.

But one can only guess at how difficult it would be to track down the bygone history of many of the featured properties.

Commentator Ira Philips alludes to the same when he discuses the "Tin Top" wooden building in Sandys, opposite the Allen Temple AME Church.

In an illuminating essay included in the book he refers to the "old-timers" saying: "If only the walls could talk." Any reader would relish hearing some of the tales linked to the unusual homes captured for posterity by this volume.

Mr. Butler has, to his credit, managed to speak to some of the owners, but even in the time that it has taken to gather all the photographs and information together to produce this book, some of the former residents of the wooden homes featured have passed away.

The importance of these wooden structures to Bermuda's history cannot be ignored. Although few of those featured date back more than 100 years, they represent a bygone time when cheap and quick housing was required, be it for immigrant workers or military workers during the Second World War, or simply to create meeting huts.

During his research Mr. Butler came across a 1951 Royal Gazette article that reported on a one-room wooden house that was being used as a home for 24 people. In his own research the author did not come across anything approaching such squalid conditions, but he uncovered plenty of examples of the immigrant workers of the early 1900s utilising anything they could find ? including packing boxes and containers ? to create kitchen cabinets and bathroom cupboards.

The life-span of a wooden home is relatively short compared to its stone-built counterpart, and they are gradually becoming scarcer and scarcer as they are bulldozed to make way for more substantial dwellings. The final home featured in the book at Appleby Lane, Paget, is a 1930s pine cottage being demolished stage by stage to make way for a new stone-built house.

Author Mr. Butler states in his introduction: "While housing codes do not restrict people from building them, we have probably seen only two built in the past 50 years.

"I present this book as a living testimony for future generations who pass them by daily without a glance. They are hidden 'treasures' that are part of our architectural heritage."

The book is completed with thoughtful essays by historian Ira Philip, Bermuda National Gallery curator David Mitchell, former Bermuda National Trust president Henry and architect Fraser Ming and senior architect Colin Campbell.