Mapping Medieval Chester » Mapping Medieval Chester Festival

Festival – a very grand total!

cclarke — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:18:27 +0000

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!

More Festival News / Pictures

cclarke — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:35:31 +0000

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

The medieval calligraphy workshop

Historic maps - like those we used in the GIS work - on display

A special medieval Latin mass (the Sarum Rite) celebrated at St John's Church

Medieval literary tour - the 'Satire on Chester Beer'

Reflections on the Mapping Medieval Chester Festival

mfaulkner — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:12:05 +0000

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.
The literary tour was extremely well attended, and, to judge from the kind comments we received, Cestrians were fascinated to hear how the space of their streets was understood in the Middle Ages. I read Lucian’s rather involved allegorical reading of the crossroads in the centre of Chester, in which he connects the two crossing streets to the two sticks collected by the Widow of Sareptha (for a refresher, see 3Kings 17:9-16) and to the two pieces of wood which formed the cross on which Christ was crucified. I think Lucian would have been quite gratified to hear one listener’s response of ‘how interesting’. It was, I think, also interesting for the project’s researchers to read their texts in situ. Often, the destruction of the ancient cities and buildings we study forces us to use our imagination to envisage how they must have looked, and sometimes, unfortunately, this methodology is generalised even when there are extensive physical remains. For example, I had forgotten just how prominently Wales is visible from Chester, particularly from the north of the city, which forced me to think about whether Lucian’s comment that ‘all evil’ is arrayed outside the North Gate, should be read as a slur on the Welsh.

One of the real surprises of the literary tour for me was to learn that the local pronunciation of the ‘Cestrian’ is ‘Sestrian’. Lucian calls the locals ‘Cestrenses’. My wonderful Welsh Latin teacher, the inimitable DBE, so hammered into my mind that Latin [c] is always hard, that I had never considered the possibility that it would be pronounced anything other than ‘Cestrian’. Nonetheless, the OED gives the pronunciation ‘Sestrian’. During the launch of the website in the Grosvenor Museum, we had a very interesting question which again picked up my pronunciation and suggested that the word is pronounced ‘Sestrian’ on analogy with places like Leicester and Worcester. The second element in these place names is Old English ‘ceaster’ which would have been pronounced with a ‘ch’, hence ‘cheaster’ (and whence the modern name ‘Chester’). We don’t know a great deal about medieval Latin pronunctiation, but it seems likely ‘Cestrenses’ was actually pronounced ‘Chestrenses’… Please do comment if you know why it’s pronounced ‘Sestrian’!

I’d like to close by thanking Sue Hughes of the Grosvenor Museum for all her work in organising the day and making it such a success, as well as all the Cestrians / Sestians / Chestrians who turned out and showed such enthusiasm for our project. Thank you!

Chester events – recent and forthcoming…

cclarke — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:55:30 +0000

Sue Hughes at the Grosvenor Museum has just sent us the following report on the recent ‘Minstrels’ Court’ event – it sounds like great fun. If living history and interactive events capture your imagination, then please do come and join us at the forthcoming ‘Mapping Medieval Chester Festival’ (Saturday 29th August). For further information see the earlier blog post or contact the Grosvenor Museum.

Minstrel’s Court Event

A successful Minstrels’ Court helped celebrate medieval Chester and publicise the Mapping Medieval Chester Festival on 29 August 2009. ‘Medieval’ Musicians were presented with their licences to play by Reverend Chesters and are now safe from being arrested as vagabonds for another year.

Musician Richard York demonstrated a wide variety of Medieval instruments and allowed the public to have a go. The 1265 group from the Midlands had volunteered to help with the day and gave a fantastic demonstration of arming a knight, whilst the women demonstrated textile and braid making and there was even a Medieval leper! Tom Hughes did some Cheshire story-telling about the dragon of Moston and St Werburgh. There were also displays about pilgrimage, relics and the church.

The Minstrels were joined by local musicians in a Medieval ‘jamming’ session and even the local Morris dancers got wind that there was something going on and joined in as well.

The Minstrels’ Court will be re-created again in June 2010, when we will discover how many of the musicians are granted licences this time!

Mapping Medieval Chester Festival

cclarke — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:14:14 +0000

As well as our academic colloquium on the theme of ‘Mapping the Medieval City’, we’ll also be holding a public event in Chester. The ‘Mapping Medieval Chester Festival’, organised in partnership with the Grosvenor Museum, will be held on Saturday 29 August 2009 (Bank Holiday weekend). The Festival will celebrate the launch of the project website, and will include a wide variety of interesting and fun activities designed to bring the medieval city to life. We’re hoping to involve lots of local people, as well as visitors to the city.

Come and join us and discover more about Chester in the medieval period! You can come along to a calligraphy workshop and learn to write Gothic script, meet medieval pilgrims at St John’s Church, take a medieval-focused tour of the cathedral, explore the medieval Water Tower, join a literary tour of the city with project researchers – and much more! Some activities require booking in advance.

You can find further information about the day here. We hope to see you there!