The 15th century Gough map and the survival of Roman routeways in England

Dr. Eljas Oksanen & Dr. Stuart Brookes will present insights from the fifteenth-century Gough map of Great Britain , and show how it illustrates how parts of the Roman network remained in use a millenium after the Roman period in Britain. Join us on Thursday December 11th, 2025 at 19:30 GMT (London time).

London on the Gough Map (north is to the left)

This paper presents new research on travel and communications routes in England and Wales derived from the medieval Gough Map of Great Britain, dated c. fifteenth century. Taking this as a very partial, but important, sample of the fuller medieval travel networks, we evaluate the survival of Roman routeways. Using computational and qualitative approaches, we consider route character, regionality and relative quantity, shedding light into the complex transformations of human landscapes that occurred both at macro (national) and micro (regional, local) scales across approximately one thousand years. The presentation is based on an article published at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106227.

This presentation will take place via Zoom, and will be followed by a Q&A session. As with all our talks, tickets are free, but we welcome donations when booking a ticket to help us cover our costs. Attendees will receive a link by email after registration, and reminder emails two days before the talk. The meeting room will open to the public at 7:15pm GMT (London time) with the talk starting at 7:30pm GMT (London time).