With the onset of Britain’s third covid-19 lockdown within a year, Triskele Heritage will be stepping up to try and provide some (hopefully) entertaining and informative free public talks. The weekly lockdown lectures will feature the fruits of our research so you can be sure that the content will all be bang up to date!
Each week we will host a lockdown lecture freely accessible to anyone with a web connection via Zoom. All you need to do is register via Eventbrite and – when the time for the talk rolls around – grab your favourite beverage of choice, get comfy and enjoy.
Our next event will take place at 17:00GMT on Thursday1 April 2021 and will focus on Mediaeval Buildings: Myths & Mistakes.
Booking is now available via Eventbrite.
Due to our licensing agreement with Zoom tickets for each event will be limited to 495 places. If you cannot make it after booking, please do return your ticket so that someone else can enjoy the talk instead.
Please note that this is a live event only and there will not be a recording of the talk available afterwards.
If you have a question about the event – in the first instance please see our FAQs section. The answer will almost certainly be in there.
More information on the talk
Historic buildings specialists often meet folk who are eager to talk about their properties and their enthusiasm is genuinely infectious. We can learn so much of value about a society by what it builds.
However, romanticised and elaborated stories often grow up around certain mysterious features in mediaeval buildings – houses built of ship timbers, crusader graffiti, swordsmen fighting on spiral staircases, leper squints and secret passages – it is surprising how often these get repeated all across the country in so many different structures.
This panel discussion will look at some of the most common misconceptions surrounding historic buildings. The legends will be outlined, the origins of the myths explained and the underlying truth behind each story will be revealed. We hope that the event will help to give a broader and deeper understanding of mediaeval buildings that will bring us just that little bit closer to their former occupants.
Dr Jonathan Foyle is quite obsessed by historic buildings. From an immersive career in conservation, research and curating, he is fortunate to have found ways to share many discoveries and insights into our ancestors’ experiences. He is an award-winning BBC broadcaster, Visiting Professor in Conservation at the University of Lincoln and author of well-received monographs on cathedrals – including Canterbury and Lincoln – he also draws a bit.
Dr Emma Wells defines herself as an academic, author, and broadcaster. She is an ecclesiastical and architectural historian as well as public historian, specialising in the late medieval/early modern English parish church/cathedral, pilgrimage, the cult of saints, and the ‘senses’, as well as built heritage more generally.
Dr Rachel Swallow is focused on interdisciplinary and cross-period research into British fortifications and their landscapes. She has a particular interest in the form and siting of castles of the Irish Sea Region.
James Wright FSA is an award winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
