Completion of the Mapping the Medieval Countryside Project
Posted by: mholford 9 years, 1 month ago
Michael Hicks writes:
Mapping the Medieval Countryside was a three year project that officially finished on 31st December 2014. Unfortunately it was not possible to complete all the three objectives by that date, but the University of Winchester is funding the researchers until 31 July 2015, which should enable all the necessary work to be finalised. All volumes of calendars 1236-1422 (i-xviii) and 1485-1509 (2nd ser. i-iii) have been digitised for presentation on British History Online, but some niggles remain to be remedied: this digital version will probably be ready in February 2015. Another version is to include the enhanced text for 1399-1422 (volumes xviii-xxi)and the latest volumes 1422-47 (xxxii-xxvi) on the the project website. This work is in hand. Several volumes have been already digitally marked up for persons and places. It is expected to mark up the rest and publish the webmounted interactive database by the new deadline. The fulfilment of these objectives will be undertaken by Matthew Holford, Matthew Tompkins, and Gordon McKelvie from Winchester supported by Jason Sadler from the GeoData Institute, University of Southampton, in consultation with Paul Spence and the team from the Department for Digital Humanities, King's College London. The website, with its featured IPMs, blogs, and news will remain live,
Follow on project to Mapping the Medieval Countryside
The Mapping the Medieval Countryside project made the published calendars of inquisitions post mortem far more accessible, enhanced those for 1399-1422, and will open the whole period 1399-1447 to more sophisticated searching and analysis. It was never designed to answer research questions. Moreover calendaring and digitising the IPMs for 1447-83 remains a top priority. A follow on project entitled The Indian Summer of English Feudalism 1327-1509 was to exploit the feudal material common to all the published IPMs and to make these aspects available digitally for the gap of 1447-85. This proposal was submitted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), where it received laudatory reviews – its importance, one reviewer stated, could not be gainsaid – and received the extremely high grade of 5. Unfortunately other projects were also highly rated, and the project was not funded. Since the project clearly had merit, the team have been looking to recycle it in two other projects: on English Landholding 800-1600. Targeted at AHRC, and Feudal Society 1350-1500, to be submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council. This strategy was approved by the Advisory Board at its last meeting on 8 January 2015.