FREE public talk by Professor Helen Fulton (University of Bristol) that is part of the Bristol650 anniversary celebrations. Everybody welcome!

The production of urban maps in Britain is largely an early modern phenomenon, arising out of the Tudor political project of creating a single nation called England that covered the whole of the island of Britain. Before then, medieval city descriptions formed verbal maps of towns which performed much the same function as cartographical maps. In the medieval project of mapping territory, whether visual or verbal, towns were major points of reference, standing as witnesses to historical and geographical claims of nation and empire. This talk will explore some classical and medieval urban descriptions with particular reference to the medieval cities of Bristol, Swansea and London. The medieval streets of each of these cities have recently been mapped in newly-published OS-style maps produced by the Historic Towns Trust, and the talk will use these maps to show how verbal descriptions can be turned into cartographic designs.

Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/literary-topographies-and-historical-city-maps-bristol-swansea-london-tickets-662911394827