Maps, Myth, and More Modern History
The Gough Map, dating from around 1360, is one of the earliest detailed maps of Britain, with rivers, towns, and even the length of journeys carefully inked.
Fast forward to 1492, when the European world’s horizons exploded outward—Columbus sailed west, Granada fell, and a new age of exploration was born, forever changing the medieval worldview.
Personal Heroes and Renaissance Links
No tour is complete without a nod to the personalities that bridge the medieval and Renaissance worlds. Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), the Venetian painter, is an unlikely “medieval hero” for some, recording the transition to vibrant humanist art. Meanwhile, modern figures like historian Tom Holland and Mary Beard explore the older worlds of Greece and Rome, showing how the classical past still haunted medieval imaginations. Even gardening archaeologists like Adam Frost and Frances Tophill, digging deeper into heritage soils, keep the medieval landscape alive for today’s visitors.
In Conclusion: Echoes of the Past
From St Albans’ clock tower to the silent stones of Roche Abbey in Yorkshire, from Lichfield’s cathedral close to medieval English houses (1300–1800) evolving over centuries, these places all share a common thread. They remind us that history is never truly dead—it lives on in walls, in worn thresholds, in the moss-covered ruins that stubbornly refuse to vanish.
So next time you wander a castle keep, peer into an abbey cloister, or even sniff the faint tannery stench still lingering in old London lanes, remember: the medieval world is not so distant. It breathes quietly all around us, waiting to be discovered anew. shutdown123