The records from over 200 Nottinghamshire manors are now accessible online thanks to Nottinghamshire County Council and the National Archives in the United Kingdom.
The Manorial Documents register was launched earlier this week at an event at Nottinghamshire Archives. The records date back to the fourteenth century.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
Showing posts with label University of Nottingham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label University of Nottingham. Show all posts
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Midlands Viking Symposium to explore the legacy of the Vikings in Ireland
This year’s Midlands Viking Symposium will be taking place outside the United Kingdom for the first time in its history as scholars focus on the role of the Norse in Ireland.
The symposium (April 29th – May 1st) will be held in Dublin, with the opening address and reception taking place at the National Museum of Ireland.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
The symposium (April 29th – May 1st) will be held in Dublin, with the opening address and reception taking place at the National Museum of Ireland.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Disease, Disability and Medicine in Early Medieval Europe workshop at the University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham will be hosting a workshop this Sunday and Monday that will examine how disability, in all its forms, was viewed and treated during the Middle Ages. Disease, Disability and Medicine in Early Medieval Europe AD 400-1200 will feature over a dozen scholars who will examine the cultural, religious, social and even legal implications for those afflicted with a malady of the mind or body.
It will cover topics usually considered to be relatively modern issues including mental illness, male infertility, health and safety at work and body image.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
It will cover topics usually considered to be relatively modern issues including mental illness, male infertility, health and safety at work and body image.
Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net
Friday, May 14, 2010
Uncovering Nottingham’s hidden medieval sandstone caves
The very latest laser technology combined with old fashioned pedal power is being used to provide a unique insight into the layout of Nottingham’s sandstone caves — where the city’s renowned medieval ale was brewed and, where legend has it, the country’s most famous outlaw Robin Hood was imprisoned.
The Nottingham Caves Survey, being carried out by archaeologists from Trent and Peak Archaeology at The University of Nottingham, has already produced extraordinary, three dimensional, fly through, colour animation of caves that have been hidden from view for centuries.
Below the grounds of Nottingham Castle and across the city there is a labyrinth of medieval tunnels, dungeons, maltings and cellars — people even carved primitive living quarters out of Nottingham’s sandstone cliffs.
The man-made caves, cut into the strata of rock known as Sherwood Sandstone, are being recorded by laser scanners, which produce up to 500,000 survey points a second, enabling us to see these excavations as never before.
Archaeologists already know of around 450 caves — some are well documented and currently scheduled monuments of local and national importance. With funding of £250,000 from the Greater Nottingham Partnership, emda, English Heritage, The University of Nottingham and Nottingham City Council it is hoped that over the next two and a half years these and many more can be recorded and mapped.
Dr David Walker, of Trent and Peak Archaeology, said: “This remarkable new technology will create a full measured record of the caves in three dimensions. This gives us two really important things — a highly detailed archaeological record of the historic caves, and a new way for people to view caves they may never have seen before. For the first time visitors will be able to explore Nottingham’s unique caves with a laptop or smartphone over the web. However, there have to be many more caves that we don’t even know about and we want to hear from anyone who might have a sandstone tunnel at the back of their house, office or garden.”
The survey will build on the work of the British Geological Survey carried out in the 1980s. Archaeologists are using environmentally-friendly trailer-pulling bicycles to get themselves and their research equipment about the city. And if you have a cave hidden away in your back garden or at the back of your office block or home they will be more than happy to pop by.
Although many caves and tunnels are blocked up some are still accessible to tourists or used as pub cellars. The project goals are to assess the archaeological importance of Nottingham’s caves, to present the caves in a new and exciting way and to preserve Nottingham’s unique and fragile resource for future generations.
You can read and see more about the Nottingham Caves Survey at: http://www.nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/index.htm
Source: AlphaGallileo
The Nottingham Caves Survey, being carried out by archaeologists from Trent and Peak Archaeology at The University of Nottingham, has already produced extraordinary, three dimensional, fly through, colour animation of caves that have been hidden from view for centuries.
Below the grounds of Nottingham Castle and across the city there is a labyrinth of medieval tunnels, dungeons, maltings and cellars — people even carved primitive living quarters out of Nottingham’s sandstone cliffs.
The man-made caves, cut into the strata of rock known as Sherwood Sandstone, are being recorded by laser scanners, which produce up to 500,000 survey points a second, enabling us to see these excavations as never before.
Archaeologists already know of around 450 caves — some are well documented and currently scheduled monuments of local and national importance. With funding of £250,000 from the Greater Nottingham Partnership, emda, English Heritage, The University of Nottingham and Nottingham City Council it is hoped that over the next two and a half years these and many more can be recorded and mapped.
Dr David Walker, of Trent and Peak Archaeology, said: “This remarkable new technology will create a full measured record of the caves in three dimensions. This gives us two really important things — a highly detailed archaeological record of the historic caves, and a new way for people to view caves they may never have seen before. For the first time visitors will be able to explore Nottingham’s unique caves with a laptop or smartphone over the web. However, there have to be many more caves that we don’t even know about and we want to hear from anyone who might have a sandstone tunnel at the back of their house, office or garden.”
The survey will build on the work of the British Geological Survey carried out in the 1980s. Archaeologists are using environmentally-friendly trailer-pulling bicycles to get themselves and their research equipment about the city. And if you have a cave hidden away in your back garden or at the back of your office block or home they will be more than happy to pop by.
Although many caves and tunnels are blocked up some are still accessible to tourists or used as pub cellars. The project goals are to assess the archaeological importance of Nottingham’s caves, to present the caves in a new and exciting way and to preserve Nottingham’s unique and fragile resource for future generations.
You can read and see more about the Nottingham Caves Survey at: http://www.nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/index.htm
Source: AlphaGallileo
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sacred music of medieval Nottinghamshire revived
The Binchois Consort will be performing a varied programme of choral music, including a selection of chants from the Wollaton Antiphonal, a huge 15th century illustrated medieval service book. They will demonstrate vividly in sound the rich legacy of the Antiphonal, and of English sacred music of the time.
The concert in the Djanogly Recital Hall at Lakeside on Saturday May 8 at 7.30pm will bring to life some of the medieval music contained within the 412 vellum leaves of the manuscript.
The Antiphonal was made in about 1430 for Sir Thomas Chaworth of Wiverton, the richest man in Nottinghamshire. When he died it was bought for the Parish Church, St Leonard’s in Wollaton. It survived the Reformation when many such service books were destroyed because it was moved into Wollaton Hall library for safekeeping. It was then returned to the church in 1924 when the family sold the Hall but its deteriorating condition prompted St Leonard’s to place it in the care of the University where work is being carried out to conserve and protect it.
Several leaves from the Antiphonal will be on display in an exhibition Saints Sinners and Storytellers, which can be viewed at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre on University Park from April 30 until August 8 2010.
Early music expert, Philip Weller, from the University’s Music Department, is one of the few scholars who has had the opportunity to view the Antiphonal owing to the fragile state of the leaves. Once the preservation of the manuscript is complete it will be possible for scholars to make a detailed study of the contents.
He said, “The Antiphonal is a rare survival, not only for its physical size and visual splendour but also for the valuable information it has to offer us. It gives us a vivid idea of the religious culture of the time, and how it was expressed musically — and also, not least, how incredibly varied it was. In the Binchois Consort recital, we’ve tried to show how the chants contained in the Antiphonal relate more widely to the kinds of polyphonic music (music arranged in several parts) that might have been heard during the various phases of its early history, from its origins up to the time of its arrival, and subsequent use, in Wollaton.”
It is known from preliminary study that the Antiphonal contains music for the daily services of the medieval church, and has chants that were standard in the Sarum Use of the medieval English liturgy, as well as some later additions of chants that derive from the York Use, and which point, interestingly, towards evidence of Nottinghamshire ownership. The manuscript also includes chants for a whole range of special feasts and saints’ days.
The Wollaton Antiphonal is particularly famous as the only known source for the chants written in honour of a little-known English saint, St John of Bridlington. He was a local English saint from Thwing in East Yorkshire. Known then as John Twenge, the cleric held a number of posts with St Mary’s Abbey in Bridlington and died in 1379. He was canonised in 1386, the last English saint before the Reformation, after he ‘appeared’ to five sailors from Hartlepool whose ship was in danger of sinking. The story goes that he appeared to them wearing his habit and brought them back to the safety of the shore. The men left their vessel at the harbour and walked to the monastery where they thanked John in person for saving their lives. The stained glass window in the priory church in Bridlington depicts St John as a teacher and prior. He is also the patron saint of women in difficult labour.
Henry V's victory at Agincourt was attributed to the aid of Saint John of Bridlington and Saint John of Beverly and in 1415 King Henry V made a pilgrimage to St John's tomb in Bridlington to give thanks for victory at the battle of Agincourt.
The Binchois Consort will perform several chants and also sections of the three-voice Mass which is one of the earliest known masses to be unified by a single plainchant melody, the ‘Quem malignus spiritus’. This mass exists in a source in Cambridge University Library, but also, more intriguingly, in Continental manuscript sources as well: the Trent Codices in northeastern Italy, and a fragment of a manuscript in Lucca, originally from Bruges. So the survival of the Bridlington chants in Nottinghamshire proves to have a thoroughly international resonance!
The polyphonic works that will be performed together with the chants from the Antiphonal were written by musicians associated with the household chapels of the Lancastrian kings: Henry V (r.1413-1422) and Henry VI (r.1422-61, 1470-1) and their close associates. The composers include the famous twin lights Leonel Power (d.1445) and John Dunstable (d. 1453), as well as others such as Thomas Damett, John Cooke (d.c. 1442) and Nicholas Sturgeon. A later generation is represented by the great figure of Walter Frye (d.1474), one of whose motets was known the length and breadth of Europe. The concert opens with a Gloria ascribed to ‘Roy Henry’, very probably Henry V himself.
After the concert at Lakeside Arts Centre on May 8 the Binchois Consort will record the ‘Quem Malignus Spiritus’ Mass for release on the prestigious Hyperion label in late 2010.
More information is available from Sofia Nazar, Lakeside Arts Centre on +44 (0)115 846 7393, sofia.nazar@nottingham.ac.uk; or Dr Catherine Hocking, Lakeside Arts Music Manager on +44 (0)115 951 3959, catherine.hocking@nottingham.ac.uk
Source: University of Nottingham
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Midlands Viking Symposium 2010 takes place Saturday
This year’s theme 'Viking Masculinities' will focus on what it meant to be a man in the Viking age and the programme of talks will cover some of the most recognisable symbols of Norse culture, including runestones, burial rituals and the passage of warriors into Valhalla.
Professor Judith Jesch, Professor of Viking Studies in the School of English Studies at The University of Nottingham, said: “We’re all familiar with the Viking stereotype and the theme of the symposium this year is looking at how, as with many stereotypes, there is often a strong grounding in the truth.
“Women played an important role in Viking society — after all, every Viking warrior must have had a mother, most had a wife or a sister too. Despite that, in many aspects such as religion and warfare, it was still very much a man’s world.”
Among the highlights of this year’s programme will be a lecture by Professor James Graham-Campbell of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, one of the UK’s leading authorities on Viking archaeology. His talk entitled Dead Men Walking will focus on the archaeology of Viking burials, in which warriors were interred with a full set of armour and weaponry to enable them to take their place in Valhalla and fight among the army of the Norse god Odin.
Dr Carl Phelpstead of Cardiff University will be examining how the advent of Christianity in Scandinavia brought with it a new age of male domination through the church in his talk on The Masculine World of Bishop Laurentius of Hólar.
Nottingham’s Dr Christina Lee will speak on Moving Men: Migrations Around the Irish Sea, which will discuss some of the Viking activities in Ireland, where the Vikings were not previously believed to have a strong foothold.
The importance of women in Viking society will be acknowledged by Dr Philip Shaw of the University of Leicester, whose lecture Viking Thomasinas: Cross-Gender Name Elements in Viking Naming Practices will look at the use of male name compounds in naming female Viking children. He will argue that the practice was employed to signal relationships between male and female relatives or to promote familial cohesion through marriage.
The event will also draw on research being produced by postgraduate students at Nottingham including John Quanrud, who will speak on the victim’s point of view in Viking Armies Through Enemy Eyes: Scandinavians in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. His talk will examine the terminology used by the Anglo-Saxons to describe the Scandinavian invaders, who were variously known as the Danes, Norsemen and the Heathen Army.
The event will also feature an exhibition and talk by poet Tessa West, whose works in The Other Vikings focus on the important role of women in Viking society.
Organised by the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham and Leicester, the event is now in its sixth year and is open to the general public as well as the academic community.
Professor Jesch added: “We really want to stress that this event is open to all and we would welcome anyone with an interest in the Viking age, whatever their background. In previous years we have had a very varied audience — everyone from academics and students to primary school teachers and even Viking re-enactment enthusiasts.
“We strive to produce a stimulating programme that features talks from some of the country’s leading authorities on the subject, while also offering access to ideas coming out of current research by postgraduate students.”
Click here for more details about the symposium (PDF file)
Source: University of Nottingham
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