Heritage Institute affiliates Alex Buchanan (History), Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin (ACE), and Nick Webb (Architecture) have secured IAA funding for ‘Centring the Past: The People and Skills in Making Medieval English Vaults’.
Running throughout 2025, the project builds upon the research developed through Tracing the Past while working with heritage timberwrights from Whitacre Bespoke Carpentry and the Carpenters’ Fellowship as well as stone masons at Lincoln and Chester Cathedrals. With this cross-sector team, ‘Centring the Past’ bridges the divide between the abstract knowledge of historical craft and its practical application in Britain’s premodern builders.
The project is particularly focused on the lost carpentry involved in raising medieval vaults as structures only recoverable through opaque or indirect contemporary references and knowledge exchange with the living experience of conservators and builders working today.
Considering a set of 13th-century vaults at Chester Cathedral as a case study, the team aims to reproduce a facsimile of the timber formwork or ‘centring’ used to raise the ribbed vault to test current hypotheses regarding their construction. Through this reconstruction, and outreach events with heritage craftspeople, the project will refine our theoretical understanding of how historical woodworkers and stone-masons collaborated in the design and execution of medieval buildings, and practically demonstrate the use of digital models for those working with heritage structures today.
Take part in hands-on workshops
Along the way, the project shall run a series of workshops to establish a proof of concept for future experiential heritage research through the University and new cross-sector training and research opportunities in medieval artisanship.
The first of these heritage craft workshops will be held on Friday 23 May 2025 and focuses on converting ‘timbers in the round’ (i.e. logs) into squared timbers with hand tools. This hands-on practice will be accompanied by presentations on the digital modelling and historical research underpinning the build.
Those interested in more information on the project should contact glenn.cahilly-bretzin@liverpool.ac.uk or visit the Eventbrite page for the taster day here.