'Mapping the Medieval Countryside: The Fifteenth-Century Inquisitions Post Mortem' is a three-year project led by medieval historian Professor Michael Hicks at Winchester and made possible by technical research at the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London.
Inquisitions post mortems (IPMs) are the single most important source for the study of landed society in later medieval England and to a lesser extent of Tudor and Stuart England, with thousands held in the National Archives at Kew.The project will digitise 29 volumes covering periods between 1236 to 1447 and 1485 to 1509 and publish them on British History Online where any researcher, archaeologist or amateur historian can view them for free.
The original volumes are highly expensive and difficult to manipulate in the way required by modern scholarship, explained Professor Hicks. This project will revolutionise how scholars can access this information.
The two universities will work together to digitise hundreds of years' worth of records showing land held by feudal tenants at the time of their death. The 'Mapping the Medieval Countryside' Project has been made possible by a £528,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
King's is internationally renowned for its digital humanities research, said Paul Spence, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's. This project will build on our ground-breaking research in digital historical studies, computer-based text modelling and visualisation.
The most recently published IPM volumes, covering the years 1399 to 1447, will be converted into a fully interactive database which allows users to search and analyse all of the data, which are scarcely usable in its current form. In addition, map-based statistical analysis will allow researchers to trace changes in land usage and provide new insights into the people and places mentioned in the texts.
Following the completion of the three-year project, the researchers intend to enhance other volumes to the same standard and fill the gap in published IPMs between 1447 and 1485.
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A print-ready image is available to download by clicking here
Caption: Winchester Historians, Professor Michael Hicks (Director) and Dr Matthew Holford (researcher) with some of the Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem (IPMs) to be digitised.
Further information about the Project can be found on:
http://www.winchester.ac.uk/academic-departments/history/research/the-inquisitions-post-mortem-project