Mapping Medieval Chester

We’ve received some enquiries via our Mailing List about the future of this project and ways in which people can get involved. We’re really grateful for your continued interest and hope to keep in touch via the Blog about news, developments and future activities.

We’re currently working with the Grosvenor Museum Chester, and other partners in Chester itself, to look at ways in which we could share our project research with the local community and visitors to the city. We’re hoping to apply for funding to make this possible and have several meetings coming up to discuss ideas. Watch this space for news as our plans take shape!

On a separate note, we’ve just found out that the ‘Mapping Medieval Chester’ project will be featuring in an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) report for government and other stakeholders entitled ‘Changing the World: the impact of the arts and humanities’. We’re really pleased to be included in a report which shows the value that this kind of research can have both within and beyond academia. Who knows – perhaps Peter Mandelson will soon be reading about Lucian and Henry Bradshaw over his morning cup of coffee…

The innovative GIS-based mapping work carried out by the project team is getting noticed by others in the fields of digital humanities and historical cartography.

Keith Lilley has been asked to contribute to an event being held at the University of Lancaster in February on the theme of Landscapes, memories and cultural practices: A GIS/GPS digital heritage mapping network, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and British Telecom, and organised by Dr Ian Gregory. Of the event, Ian says the “aim is to bring people with humanities GIS content together with technical experts so that we can work towards developing systems that will provide location-specific content to users in the field”. This discussion will have a bearing on future work we have in mind developing further the existing Chester online resource.

Shortly after the Lancaster meeting, Keith is then off to the University of Padua in Italy at the invitation of Alexandra Chavarria, an archaeologist researcher in Padua who is working alongside Professor Gian Pietro Brogiol on a project called Architettura Residenziale Medievale a Padova (further details of which are accessible here). This is quite similar in nature to Mapping Medieval Chester and through this exchange we shall share experiences of mapping medieval cities using GIS and look to future potential collaborative work that builds upon both the Padua and Chester projects.

All in all, as we had hoped, Mapping Medieval Chester is still very much alive as a project, and will continue to spawn new initiatives and influence future research agendas in a wide range of fields.

If you’re in Chester this weekend, there’s a great event at the Cathedral, involving our friends from the Grosvenor Museum. I’ve copied the notice here. It sounds really festive and fun – I wish I could go!

Fancy a taste of medieval festive fun? Then Chester Cathedral is definitely the place to be on Saturday, 5 December.

The Cathedral’s Chapter House will offer a choice of Christmas fayre, herbs and spices, that figured on menus of the Middle Ages against the background of carols. Musical accompaniment will be played on instruments of the period like the gemshorn, rauschpfeife and timbrell. Visitors will also have the chance to revel in the Yuletide atmosphere of past centuries by joining in the dancing, Mummers’ Plays and story-telling. There will also be a chance make beeswax candles – once brought as offerings to the shrine of  St Werburgh, or examine the false religious relics being offered by the  Pardoner - a medieval figure purporting to sell papal pardons or indulgences.

A Medieval Christmas – an opportunity to meet and discover some of the contemporary characters and traditions of the period from 10.30am to 4pm.

Admission is free. The event has been organised jointly by Chester Cathedral and the Cheshire West Museums Service.

This week I was in Chester at the invitation of the Chester Archaeological Society, to give a presentation on our project research. I spoke in the beautiful environment of the Grosvenor Museum lecture theatre, and there was a really strong audience present to hear about our work on mapping the medieval city. It was particularly good to have so many interesting and thoughtful questions, both in the formal Q&A after my talk and whilst chatting over tea and biscuits afterwards.

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Cynthia Turner Camp at the University of Georgia, Athens – one of our volume contributors – has just forwarded this CFP which may be of interest to readers of this Blog. The deadline’s pretty soon, but it looks a very interesting conference panel.

Insular Identities and the Borders of Medieval Britain
Northeast Modern Language Association, April 7-11 2010, Montreal, Quebec

While England, Scotland, and Wales each produced their own bodies of literature in the Middle Ages, their physical proximity at times engendered a sense of shared literary culture, even as the fraught political relations among them complicated any notion of a shared identity. This panel seeks to explore Britain’s insular identities through an examination of its borders, and invites papers dealing with depictions of borders, bordered identities, border theory, or cross-border relations in medieval Britain. Send abstracts to Katherine H. Terrell: kterrell@hamilton.edu by 30 September.

Just a very short post: today I received the total numbers for the people who participated in our Mapping Medieval Chester Festival in Chester at the end of August. The grand total is 1172 (very exact!). It’s brilliant news that so many people came along to the day’s events, and I think it really shows the level of local interest in Chester’s medieval heritage. Thanks to everyone for coming!

We’ve just received some more photos of the Mapping Medieval Chester Festival, taken by the professional photographer employed by the Grosvenor Museum. Some of my favourite pictures are those showing families enjoying the events and activities. For privacy / child protection reasons we can’t put those up here, but these new pictures give a glimpse into many different aspects of the day. It’s particularly nice for me to see what was going on at locations I didn’t manage to get to myself – there was just so much happening! Thanks again to the Grosvenor Museum and all those involved.

The project team handle medieval artefacts in the special exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum

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It’s now a week since the Mapping Medieval Chester Festival, a week in which I’ve been reflecting on what I learned. It really was a fantastic event and I was very touched by how enthusiastic Cestrians were to hear about some of their forebears. Read the rest of this entry »

The medieval city tour in progress

I’m now back in Swansea after a fantastic weekend in Chester for the Mapping Medieval Chester Festival, organised in partnership with the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. It was a wonderful event, with activities across the city, all inspired by our project research. Our project team enjoyed taking part in various aspects of the day, and meeting local people from Chester and the surrounding area, many of whom had their own particular knowledge of the city and its history to share with us.

Saturday’s Festival included a wide variety of activities and events: displays and special interactive exhibitions at the Grosvenor Museum, Living History at St John’s Church, medieval tours of the cathedral and special access to the medieval Water Tower, a literary tour of the city based on medieval texts, calligraphy workshops for adults and children, a presentation on the project website and opportunities to look at local history resources in the library. We’re hugely grateful to the Grosvenor Museum (and Sue Hughes especially) for organising the whole day, and to St John’s Church, Chester Cathedral, Chester Library and the Chester Archives for hosting and contributing to events. Please read on for a report on the day and some photos…

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Be part of our website – add your photos to the map!

The interactive digital map at www.medievalchester.ac.uk will soon include a layer of photos of medieval locations in Chester today. We need your help to do this!

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