Published at 15:49, Friday, 26 October 2012

THE role of maps and travel writing in the region will be described in a study day being held in December by the Centre for North-West Regional Studies.

The event is being held in the Faraday Lecture Theatre at Lancaster University on Saturday December 8.

Dr David Cooper, from the Department of History at Lancaster University, starts the study day with a talk on mapping Lake District travel writing called Surfaces and Depths.

The use of modern technology to combine landscape and literary references will be examined by Professor Ian Gregory from the Department of History at Lancaster University.

His talk is called Introducing the Spatial Humanities.

Many people will have a copy of a John Speed map in a book or even framed on the wall, such was his lasting influence on map-making in the past 400 years.

His contribution to the development of maps will be examined by Dr Ian Saunders, from the Department of Physics at Lancaster University, in a talk called Celebrating 400 Years of the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine.

Interpretation of duchy forest maps from the days of Elizabeth I will be looked at by Dr Bill Shannon, an honorary research fellow in the Department of History at Lancaster University.

His talk is entitled Queremore, Blesdale, Wyredale, Myresco and Bolland.

Dr Same Riches, from the Centre for North-West Regional Studies, said: “On one level maps are functional objects that help us find our route from one place to another – but they are much more than that.

“They can give us important information about they ways in which people have thought about and recorded landscapes.

“They can also help us to quantify the way that responses to, and understandings of, locations have changed over time.

“Meanwhile, travel writing has been a key factor in the wider public impression of landmarks and sites.

“Visitors to the North West, and perhaps most obviously to the Lake District, are frequently keen to retrace the steps of poets and other travellers who have written about particular locations.

“In many cases our emotional responses to a place – whether we find it rugged, wild, beautiful or barren – will be shaped by what we have read.”

You can get more details on the study day from the website at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/cnwrs/ or get in touch with the Centre for North-West Studies by telephone on 01524 593770 or send an email to christine.wilkinson@lancaster.ac.uk

Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk