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Gone Medieval

The Gough Map: One of Britain's Earliest Maps

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.62.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Maps. They are an essential part of modern life. But when and how did people in medieval Britain first start mapping their surroundings? The Gough Map was one of their first attempts. Compiled in the fifteenth century, it is the earliest known surviving map of Britain to be drawn on a distinct sheet of parchment.


In today’s episode of Gone Medieval, Dr Cat Jarman talks to Nick Millea and Dr Catherine Delano-Smith - two members of a multidisciplinary research project on the Gough Map - about why it is so exceptional, what it reveals about medieval Britain and how new technologies might be able to uncover the shadowy identity of its makers.


This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg


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1:33.1

Hello and welcome to today's episode of God Medieval from Historyhit. I'm your host,

1:39.2

Dr. Kat German. Maps are a pretty normal part of our lives and we use them not just for directions

1:45.3

but to work out a place in the wider world. But when did we first get detailed maps of Britain?

1:53.1

The Goff map is the earliest known surviving map of Britain drawn on a separate sheet

1:58.9

rather than a page in a book and it probably dates to the late 14th or early 15th century.

2:04.6

For its time the map is exceptional providing detail unlike anything else we have from Britain.

...

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