Capturing Medieval London: A Trail

What can contemporary photographic practice reveal about the ways the medieval past survives in the modern city? Might it allow us to capture the ways the Middle Ages exist as both a visible and invisible presence through London? And, with the camera as our way of seeing and framing the medieval, what kind of critical and creative perspectives on the medieval might emerge? 

These questions were the basis for my walking trail that sought to uncover and rediscover the medieval remains of London. The trail was not a history walk, per se, nor was it a local tour. Instead, it was a collaborative conversation about layered time (and one carried out on the move). It asked participants – ranging from photographers and medievalists to artists and those with keen interests in London history – to think with perspective and to offer perspective by using their cameras to document both the visible and invisible remains of medieval London. I invited them to think critically, to think aesthetically, to think creatively, and to challenge the ways in which they would normally perceive the famous London landmarks we explored. 
 

On this trail we viewed, framed and engaged with large-scale London landmarks, such as St Paul’s Cathedral and with lesser-known medieval remains, such as the Tower of St. Elsyng Spital. I also made connections to the poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, who was a guiding figure here, helping me to interweave the literature, life and social contexts of the Middle Ages around the sites we dwelled in and passed by. One key aim of this project was to have participants use their choice of image-maker to capture the medieval co-existing with the contemporary while responding to questions of how the passage of time is represented in place. At each site I provided a small amount of historical context but left space for interpretation and for reflection.

The trail followed a map that was topographical but also thematic: moving through conceptual strands of ‘layers’ (St. Giles Cripplegate), ‘repair’ (the City Wall and St Alphage Gardens), ‘remains’ (Tower of St. Elsyng Spital), ‘reuse’ (The Guildhall), ‘sound’ (Cheapside), ‘perspective’ (St Paul’s Cathedral), ‘making’ (Thames Path and Queenhithe), ‘recreations’ (London Bridge and St. Magnus the Martyr Church), and ‘collage/assemblage’ (All Hallows by the Tower). These critical prompts offered context for an approach to these sites and connected us to the research and investigations that medieval scholars take up today in their work on London. 

Through photography and critical thinking, we were able to draw out the ways multiple temporalities were at play at these key medieval sites, in the material buildings, in the tour itself, and in the very capturing of images. As we moved around London, past the landmarks, the building works, the people and the Thames, we sensed time physically passing but also became aware of layered time and of the consistent reminder of the medieval emerging, even erupting, into our frames and our attempts – in the flash of a photo capture – to hold time in place. And so we asked: if photography is the act of mediating between the past and the present, what kind of medieval image can we make with our cameras? 

Reflections 
Throughout the trail, we often paused to unpack our ideas and engage with the conceptual prompts as composition devices. We were very aware of how these sites have become fixed points from which the modern city has been built; they’ve shaped everything that has come after.

Looking at the pictures taken on the day, I can see that many participants captured the temporal layers of London’s history by creating collages of the medieval - a medieval that is either hidden or emerging out of much more contemporary architecture. What emerges in this new archive of photographs is an overlaying of the medieval on the modern, but also a medieval that is always asking us to look at it from different perspectives and think with it by being in proximity to its surviving material. Some participants captured the in-between, the pathways between each stop, emphasising movement between the past and the present and across the invisible lines of the old London Wall, for example, or in the visible time-flow of the Thames. 

For some of the group, these sites were new discoveries – they were places they had never come across before. For others well-acquainted with them, the sites looked back at them in new ways, asking to be read and inhabited from a non-textual perspective. 

Below is a link to the online exhibition where you will be able to see some of the responses to the medieval sites we encountered in the photographic form.  A video is in process, documenting the tour and the ideas presented. Collectively these visual outputs will become an archive of story-making within London, but also a collaborative archive of the material remains that are themselves in a state (or status) or tension between preservation and decay.

Online Exhibition: Capturing Medieval London: A Trail (jonnoclifford.github.io)

With thanks to Elliott Corteil, Jonathan Clifford and The School of Advanced Study.