Transport History

A review of the third known representation of a three wheeled mobility aid, the first with a practical application.  This paper is to encourage discussion on the British Museum item GR 1996. 7-12.2 It discusses the representation, gender, age of object, physical impairment, walking aids, fashion, hairstyle and general purpose of the model in the context of the evolution of three wheeled transport history. Revised version contains minor typos corrected and some additional information.

A review of the third known representation of a three wheeled mobility aid and the first with a practical application.  This paper is to encourage discussion on the British Museum item GR 1996. 7-12.2 It discusses the representation, gender, age of object, physical impairment, walking aids, fashion, hairstyle and general purpose of the model in the context of the evolution of three wheeled transport history.

Transport in pre-improvement Scotland is often summarised in the same manner: overland routes were poor, thus that rivers were the key transport links; those land-roads that did exist were narrow and prone to becoming swampy in wet weather. This is not singularly the case. This paper looks to the more positive evidence for early medieval roads in Ireland, and calls for a hopeful interpretation of the overland transport situation in early medieval Scotland. In doing so, these negative assertions about the quality and availability of land transport are rejected. In their place, this paper presents the ways in which roads, both in Ireland and Scotland, can be studied, and the importance of transport within an understanding of society and politics. Overland transport was a key aspect of medieval movement with wide-ranging influence.

Transport in pre-improvement Scotland is often summarised in the same manner: overland routes were poor, thus that rivers were the key transport links; those land-roads that did exist were narrow and prone to becoming swampy in wet weather. This is not singularly the case. This paper looks to the more positive evidence for early medieval roads in England and Ireland, and calls for a hopeful interpretation of the overland transport situation in early medieval Scotland. In doing so, these negative assertions about the quality and availability of land transport are rejected. In their place, this paper presents the ways in which roads can be studied. It considers the textual evidence for journeying and connecting that to what may be hoped to be found of technologies of transport. Once the extent of overland transport and communication can be established, its importance within an understanding of society and politics should not be underestimated. Overland transport was a key aspect of medieval movement with wide-ranging influence.

The ‘Wandering of St. Cuthbert’, the seven-year long journey that the Community of Cuthbert made from Lindisfarne to Chester-le-Street in the ninth century, is a key narrative in the tradition of Cuthbert’s cult. First narrated in the 'Historia de sancto Cuthberto,' and later in Symeon of Durham’s 'Libellus de exordio', the journey only comes to us from a temporal distance. This paper discusses the difference between these two narratives, and the manner in which these differences should influence historians’ understanding both of the ninth century actions, and the later narrative tradition. The narratives are contrasting in their differing presentation of the Vikings, and relation to the emphasis placed on Viking attacks as the cause of the Community departing from Lindisfarne. The numerological significance of the seven-year duration is common to both, but serves different purposes. Descriptions of technologies of travel are highly different, with the twelfth-century descriptions demonstrating twelfth-century thoughts about travel. That the translation of the cult occurred, and was then re-imagined by subsequent generations, highlights a sequence of conceptualisations of travel.

The M4 is integral to the south Wales economy, shapes the area's mental geography and contributes to the sense people in and outside Wales have of the Welsh nation being somewhere that is both part of Britain but at the same time ‘other’. Moreover, the motorway's history is the history of modern Wales: a reliance on the state, tensions over nationalism, administrative devolution and regional rivalries, the marginalization of working-class communities and the emphasis on economic integration with the rest of the U.K. This article explores these dynamics by looking at the Welsh stretch of the M4's political, economic and cultural origins, development and impacts.