Some of the most remarkable items from the Bodleian Libraries’ collections have been selected for long-term display in our Treasures Exhibition. This is where visitors can find a whole slate of the ‘greatest hits’ in one single gallery, from Shakespeare’s First Folio to Magna Carta, or Handel’s hand-annotated Messiah to Shelley’s long-lost Poetical Essay.
One extra gem – almost an honorary member of the Treasures selection – can be found just outside the exhibition. Hanging proudly on the wall in the Weston Library’s Blackwell Hall is the Sheldon Tapestry Map of Worcestershire.
This is one of four lavish, groundbreaking tapestry maps, alongside others of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, that were intricately woven from silk and wool for landowner Ralph Sheldon in the 1590s. Sections of the Oxfordshire and Worcestershire maps have been owned by the Bodleian since they were donated in 1809; we have also purchased several pieces of the Gloucestershire map at auction in the years since.
Because it’s simply so detail-packed and comes with so many stories, the Sheldon Tapestry Map gets its own special event for visitors on every weekday.
From 11.30am until noon one of our guides (who is, whenever possible, an expert from our Map Room) goes on duty in Blackwell Hall, ready to tell stories about the map or answer any visitors’ questions.
There’s a lot to say about the Sheldon maps, and the questions asked by guests will ensure that every morning’s talk is different, but here are just a few of the things we learned from the expert guide in just a few minutes – and all while we were taking onboard the tapestry’s immense, delicate beauty in person.
Each of the four tapestries shows one of the labours of Hercules. On the Worcestershire map is a depiction of Hercules killing the Hydra.
The map is largely consistent with many other maps at the time, but also features the brilliantly-named WorldesEnd which, soon after the tapestries were completed, vanished from maps entirely.
Weston House, Ralph Sheldon’s own home, is featured on all four maps, making the links between their geography more obvious.
The map’s scale is approximately 1:25,000, which is the same as today’s Ordnance Survey Explorer Maps.
The Worcestershire map is detailed in purple, with Oxford set in orange, Gloucestershire in green and Warwickshire in yellow.
Of general interest to everyone, but also a possible resource for fannish types writing about or otherwise depicting a real place they’ve never been.
This is awesome. I promise this will really help with the most obvious mistakes (clearly you are time limited to what the street looked like the day the Google car went past).
According to the U.S.G.S., the state lost just under 1,900 square miles of land between 1932 and 2000. This is the rough equivalent of the entire stateof Delaware dropping into the Gulf of Mexico, and the disappearing act has no closing date. If nothing is done to stop the hemorrhaging, the state predicts as much as another 1,750 square miles of land — an area larger than Rhode Island — will convert to water by 2064. An area approximately the size of a football field continues to slip away every hour.
Amazing long article about the effects of people on Louisiana – from the levees for the Mississippi River to the oil industry to fishing to hurricanes. And how complicated the whole thing is and will be to come to some sort of fix with it. It’s a long read but totally worth it.
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