The Tracing the Past project at the University of Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has spent the past seven years recording and analysing vaults in England.…
We are delighted to be hosting our second symposium focusing on research into gothic vaults, particularly that aided by digital tools. MMV2 will be an online event hosted by the…
In September 2020 we were due to visit Berlin to attend the eCAADe conference, however, COVID-19 shifted proceedings online. Our paper, written by the entire project team, documented and analysed…
The first of our guest reviewer sessions was organised on Wednesday 18th December in 2019. We asked one of the contributors, Richard Plant, to write a blog post about his…
One of the most exciting parts of any research project are the unexpected questions which arise along the way. Whilst reviewing our scan data or attempting to reconstruct the underlying…
Last week (11-14th October) we returned to Wells, revisiting our earlier scans and taking the opportunity to scan new areas. In particular, we have been privileged to be allowed to…
On 29th to 31st July, we visited Lincoln cathedral to laser scan the interior. The cathedral is something of a magnet for vault enthusiasts, featuring a magnificent range of mainly…
Our article investigating the use of digital generative design tools to assist with analysis of Exeter cathedral has now been published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing. This article…
This week we have been scanning at Norwich cathedral. This is the biggest site we’ve tackled to date – the whole Norman cathedral was covered with lierne vaults in the…
We were shocked and saddened at the scenes from Paris as Notre-Dame Cathedral blazed in the night. Today’s news that the structure of the building seems to be safe has…
We were very saddened to learn of the death in November last year of Professor Andrew Tallon, whose obituary was published on the Society of Architectural Historians’ website. Although we…
If you would like to hear more about the project, we are sending a newsletter out every six months. You can subscribe using this link or via the QR code…
In January 2019, we travelled to London to undertake a digital survey of the medieval vaults of Westminster Abbey and the Victorian reconstructed vaults of the undercroft of the destroyed…
We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Associate and a Research Technician on a fixed term contract to be part of our exciting AHRC funded project titled ‘Tracing the…
In October we attended Digital Heritage 2018 in San Francisco. Here we presented our initial investigations into the vault design of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, as well as…
In July we attended the 6th International Congress on Construction History, hosted in Brussels, Belgium. The conference included participants with a wide range of interests in construction history and…
Through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Early Career Research Grant scheme, we have secured funding to develop the project further. Using the grant, we will scan vaults at five…
We were delighted to have the opportunity to present our initial findings on the tracing floor processes of the 14th century vaults at Ely cathedral as part of the Cambridge…
David Wendland and his ‘Late Gothic Vaults’ team have produced a film exploring the vaults of St Anne Church in Annaberg-Buchholz, which feature complex double curvatures. Using total station surveying…
Before the start of the teaching year, we just managed to fit in a day’s scanning at Norton Priory, the site of a ruined Augustinian priory near Runcorn in Cheshire.…
Our article investigating the creativity and imagination used to design the choir aisles at Wells cathedral has now been published in ‘British Art Studies’. This article is free to view here. Abstract…
In July 2017, we travelled to Tewkesbury Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral to create digital surveys of their respective vaults. First, we surveyed the abbey at Tewkesbury using our standard methods…
On Friday 2 June, we’ll be sharing our latest research on St Mary’s church, Nantwich on the first day of a conference at the Courtauld Institute entitled Towards an Art…
On Saturday 8th April, we presented a paper to the 4th Annual Conference of the Construction History Society, which took place in the congenial surroundings of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Robert…
Our article investigating the use of digital techniques to analyse the choir aisles at Wells cathedral has now been published in ‘Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’. This article…
We are delighted that our symposium ‘Modelling Medieval Vaults’ was reviewed in the first issue of The Construction Historian (the magazine of the Construction History Society). With the kind permission…
This week Nick presented at Digital Past 2017 in Newport, Wales. The paper focussed on the digital surveying and subsequent analysis of the fourteenth century medieval vaults in the chancel…
At eCAADe 2016 (Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe) in Oulu, Finland, Nick presented a paper co-authored with Alex and JR discussing the advantages of different…
Tracing the Past was inspired by the work of Robert Willis (1800-1875), a famous Cambridge polymath. He was Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and taught engineering in the early…
We already reported that the Society of Antiquaries of London have very generously funded a trip to Ely Cathedral, where we shall be scanning the vaults in the Presbytery, the…
The final programme for the modelling medieval vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London on Thursday 14th July is now available here. A list of the presentation abstracts are…
We are delighted that Balázs Szakonyi will present research investigating the role of horizontal ribs in late Gothic vault construction in Hungary as part of the Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium alongside Gergely…
As part of the upcoming Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London, Thomas Bauer and Jörg Lauterbach will be presenting their investigations of Benedikt Ried’s deconstructive…
Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium (UoL in London, 14 July 2016, 9:30am—5:00pm) The University of Liverpool in London, Finsbury Square—Seminar Room 4 Organised by Dr Alex Buchanan and Dr Nick Webb Tickets can be…
For the final day of our visit to Devon we travelled from Exeter to Ottery St Mary Church to scan the vaults there. Ottery St Mary was built by Bishop…
On Wednesday 30th March we travelled to Devon to collect more survey data from two sites; Exeter Cathedral and Ottery St Mary Church. We spent two days at Exeter and…
Through the Lambarde Fund, we have received a grant from the Society of Antiquaries to scan the lierne vaults at Ely Cathedral, which we intend to carry out towards the…
On Saturday 20 March, Alex went to London to attend a study day at the Courtauld Institute, organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Ancient Monuments Society to commemorate…
On the vaults page we have started a map which locates significant Medieval vaults in the British Isles. So far we have included sites already visited and scanned as well…
Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London, 14 July 2016. Through the University of Liverpool’s Interdisciplinary Network Fund we are organising a symposium primarily exploring the…
On 10th and 11th February 2016 Nick attended Digital Past 2016, an annual conference organised by the Royal Commission on the Ancient Monuments of Wales focussing on the use of…
On Monday 1 Feb Nick and Alex went to the University of York to an event organised by Professor Tim Ayers, which brought together three leading experts on European late…
On Friday 13th November 2015 we visited Nantwich St Mary’s to scan the medieval vaults in the choir, as well as the intriguing reconstructed vaults in the crossing by George…
The Tracing the Past project at the University of Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has spent the past seven years recording and analysing vaults in England.…
We are delighted to be hosting our second symposium focusing on research into gothic vaults, particularly that aided by digital tools. MMV2 will be an online event hosted by the…
In September 2020 we were due to visit Berlin to attend the eCAADe conference, however, COVID-19 shifted proceedings online. Our paper, written by the entire project team, documented and analysed…
The first of our guest reviewer sessions was organised on Wednesday 18th December in 2019. We asked one of the contributors, Richard Plant, to write a blog post about his…
One of the most exciting parts of any research project are the unexpected questions which arise along the way. Whilst reviewing our scan data or attempting to reconstruct the underlying…
Last week (11-14th October) we returned to Wells, revisiting our earlier scans and taking the opportunity to scan new areas. In particular, we have been privileged to be allowed to…
On 29th to 31st July, we visited Lincoln cathedral to laser scan the interior. The cathedral is something of a magnet for vault enthusiasts, featuring a magnificent range of mainly…
Our article investigating the use of digital generative design tools to assist with analysis of Exeter cathedral has now been published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing. This article…
This week we have been scanning at Norwich cathedral. This is the biggest site we’ve tackled to date – the whole Norman cathedral was covered with lierne vaults in the…
We were shocked and saddened at the scenes from Paris as Notre-Dame Cathedral blazed in the night. Today’s news that the structure of the building seems to be safe has…
We were very saddened to learn of the death in November last year of Professor Andrew Tallon, whose obituary was published on the Society of Architectural Historians’ website. Although we…
If you would like to hear more about the project, we are sending a newsletter out every six months. You can subscribe using this link or via the QR code…
In January 2019, we travelled to London to undertake a digital survey of the medieval vaults of Westminster Abbey and the Victorian reconstructed vaults of the undercroft of the destroyed…
We are seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Associate and a Research Technician on a fixed term contract to be part of our exciting AHRC funded project titled ‘Tracing the…
In October we attended Digital Heritage 2018 in San Francisco. Here we presented our initial investigations into the vault design of the Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral, as well as…
In July we attended the 6th International Congress on Construction History, hosted in Brussels, Belgium. The conference included participants with a wide range of interests in construction history and…
Through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Early Career Research Grant scheme, we have secured funding to develop the project further. Using the grant, we will scan vaults at five…
We were delighted to have the opportunity to present our initial findings on the tracing floor processes of the 14th century vaults at Ely cathedral as part of the Cambridge…
David Wendland and his ‘Late Gothic Vaults’ team have produced a film exploring the vaults of St Anne Church in Annaberg-Buchholz, which feature complex double curvatures. Using total station surveying…
Before the start of the teaching year, we just managed to fit in a day’s scanning at Norton Priory, the site of a ruined Augustinian priory near Runcorn in Cheshire.…
Our article investigating the creativity and imagination used to design the choir aisles at Wells cathedral has now been published in ‘British Art Studies’. This article is free to view here. Abstract…
In July 2017, we travelled to Tewkesbury Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral to create digital surveys of their respective vaults. First, we surveyed the abbey at Tewkesbury using our standard methods…
On Friday 2 June, we’ll be sharing our latest research on St Mary’s church, Nantwich on the first day of a conference at the Courtauld Institute entitled Towards an Art…
On Saturday 8th April, we presented a paper to the 4th Annual Conference of the Construction History Society, which took place in the congenial surroundings of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Robert…
Our article investigating the use of digital techniques to analyse the choir aisles at Wells cathedral has now been published in ‘Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’. This article…
We are delighted that our symposium ‘Modelling Medieval Vaults’ was reviewed in the first issue of The Construction Historian (the magazine of the Construction History Society). With the kind permission…
This week Nick presented at Digital Past 2017 in Newport, Wales. The paper focussed on the digital surveying and subsequent analysis of the fourteenth century medieval vaults in the chancel…
At eCAADe 2016 (Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe) in Oulu, Finland, Nick presented a paper co-authored with Alex and JR discussing the advantages of different…
Tracing the Past was inspired by the work of Robert Willis (1800-1875), a famous Cambridge polymath. He was Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and taught engineering in the early…
We already reported that the Society of Antiquaries of London have very generously funded a trip to Ely Cathedral, where we shall be scanning the vaults in the Presbytery, the…
The final programme for the modelling medieval vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London on Thursday 14th July is now available here. A list of the presentation abstracts are…
We are delighted that Balázs Szakonyi will present research investigating the role of horizontal ribs in late Gothic vault construction in Hungary as part of the Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium alongside Gergely…
As part of the upcoming Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London, Thomas Bauer and Jörg Lauterbach will be presenting their investigations of Benedikt Ried’s deconstructive…
Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium (UoL in London, 14 July 2016, 9:30am—5:00pm) The University of Liverpool in London, Finsbury Square—Seminar Room 4 Organised by Dr Alex Buchanan and Dr Nick Webb Tickets can be…
For the final day of our visit to Devon we travelled from Exeter to Ottery St Mary Church to scan the vaults there. Ottery St Mary was built by Bishop…
On Wednesday 30th March we travelled to Devon to collect more survey data from two sites; Exeter Cathedral and Ottery St Mary Church. We spent two days at Exeter and…
Through the Lambarde Fund, we have received a grant from the Society of Antiquaries to scan the lierne vaults at Ely Cathedral, which we intend to carry out towards the…
On Saturday 20 March, Alex went to London to attend a study day at the Courtauld Institute, organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Ancient Monuments Society to commemorate…
On the vaults page we have started a map which locates significant Medieval vaults in the British Isles. So far we have included sites already visited and scanned as well…
Modelling Medieval Vaults symposium at the University of Liverpool in London, 14 July 2016. Through the University of Liverpool’s Interdisciplinary Network Fund we are organising a symposium primarily exploring the…
2016 marks the 700th anniversary of the birth of Charles IV, eldest son and heir of King John of Bohemia, who died at the Battle of Crécy in 1346.…
On 10th and 11th February 2016 Nick attended Digital Past 2016, an annual conference organised by the Royal Commission on the Ancient Monuments of Wales focussing on the use of…
On Monday 1 Feb Nick and Alex went to the University of York to an event organised by Professor Tim Ayers, which brought together three leading experts on European late…
On Friday 13th November 2015 we visited Nantwich St Mary’s to scan the medieval vaults in the choir, as well as the intriguing reconstructed vaults in the crossing by George…