Autumn Talk Series & Cultural Landscapes Series:

This talk explores how place-names orientated local communities and visitors in earlier times. The source material is drawn from the Ordnance Survey name books for Cumberland and Westmorland (1859), which fixed many place-names on the map. The talk derives from a pilot project to transcribe and digitise the name books for Grasmere parish. The name books shed light not only on the representation of physical geography, but also the landscape’s cultural and historical resonances. The pilot project is entitled ‘Envisaging landscapes and naming places: the Lake District before the map’, and it is funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant scheme.

Professor Fiona Edmonds is Professor in Regional History and Director of the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University. Her book Gaelic Influence in the Northumbrian Kingdom: The Golden Age and the Viking Age (Boydell & Brewer, 2019) won the Frank Watson Book prize 2021 and was shortlisted in Scotland’s National Book Awards 2021.

Please note this talk will take place at the lecture theatre on the University of Cumbria campus.