The perfect gift Map shows how Bristol would’ve looked in 1480
FANCY a map of medieval Bristol on your wall? If not, why not? Everyone needs a map of medieval Bristol somewhere in the house.
If for whatever strange reason you don’t want one, the chances are that you have to buy a Christmas present for someone who does. And fortunately, the Historic Towns Trust (HTT) are here to help.
The map of Bristol as it would have looked in 1480 has been produced by the HTT in partnership with Bristol University and local historians, plus a crowdfunding effort that raised the £10,000 needed to do it.
The map of Bristol in the time of King Edward IV is overlaid on a 1920s Ordnance Survey map so, if you feel so inclined, you can wander around the middle of town spotting where various medieval features would have been – not just the obvious things like the Castle off St Augustine’s Abbey (now the Cathedral) but more obscure things like the Tolzey and the likely sites of the pillory and the ducking stool.
It’s also a useful reminder of what an important landlord the Catholic Church was, before the Reformation, showing the full scale of St James’s Priory and the Dominican and Franciscan friaries.
The reverse side is printed with an extensive gazetteer telling you all about each of these landmarks.
We are very fortunate in that in 1480 Bristol was described in great detail, measurements and all, by Bristol-born William Worcestre (1415-c.1485), whose later career was as secretary to the soldier Sir
John Fastolf, the model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff.
In 1480 Worcestre returned to his home town, staying for a month with his sister Joan Jay. This was possibly on some sort of family business rather than a mere social visit.
During his stay he literally walked the streets, measuring thoroughfares and buildings and jotting these down in a curious mixture of different units as he went. He sometimes describes the height of buildings in fathoms, suggesting that he might have borrowed a
knotted rope used by seamen for measuring depth.
Most of the time, though, he preferred to measure things in what he called “steppys” – the length of his own two feet placed end to end.
While his survey, written up in Latin, betrays an almost unhealthy obsession with numbers, it does occasionally provide some local colour, such as when he has a casual chat with a young blacksmith in the Avon Gorge. This is how we know that people were climbing the Gorge for fun more than half a millennium ago!
William Worcestre’s manuscript has provided priceless information for local historians ever since (though all will also testify to how infuriating it is to try and decode his handwriting or the meanings of some passages) and is the basis for the new HTT map.
By the time you read this article, it should be available, price £9.99 from www.historictownsatlas.org. uk but should also be available from local retail outlets including Waterstones, Stanfords, Foyles and others.