Old maps

I’m always on the lookout for something interesting for us to do. My wife has an interest in local history, especially that of Newcastle, while cartography holds a fascination for me, so when I saw an event called Historical Maps of Newcastle upon Tyne and Tyneside, organised by Northumberland & Newcastle Society, I put our names down for a couple of tickets.

That’s how we ended up in Stannington Village Hall on a cold and wet Wednesday evening. We didn’t really know what to expect and were pleasantly surprised to see the hall half full of people, a crowd I would have been happy to have at a CyberNorth event. Looking around, it was all a bit Father Brown, however.

After an introduction, including a reference to the new faces in the audience, the main speaker got up to give his presentation. Within a few minutes, his passion for the subject and his forty years of experience as a professor shone through and we were hooked. It was obvious that maps were his life and after he had gone a quarter of an hour over his allotted time he was still only half way through his talk.

Nobody seemed to mind. Despite the hard seats everyone remained enthralled and when the chair asked if the speaker should be invited back to finish off his presentation there was unanimous agreement. 

The presentation wasn’t precisely what I had expected. It dealt with very old maps rather than some more modern ones that I was looking forward to yet it didn’t matter. Listening to someone who knows their topic inside out is interesting and stimulating. I was particularly fascinated by how the layout of Newcastle was set out from the very start and its original streets can still be seen in today’s maps. Yes, it is much bigger and buildings have come and gone yet much of what exists inside the city walls would be recognisable to people from nearly a millennium ago.

It was good to do something new. The talk was interesting and I learned a lot. Let’s hope we get the chance to hear part 2.