Helen Fulton FLSW FSA is Chair of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol and Vice-President of the Learned Society of Wales. Her research focuses on medieval literary history, regional history, and urban culture, with a particular focus on Wales and the March. 

She is the editor of Urban Culture in Medieval Wales (2012) and the co-editor of The Cambridge History of Welsh Literature (2019). As a trustee, she worked with a local team to produce the map of Bristol in 1480 and she is now leading a team to produce historical maps of Swansea and Mumbles.

Making Bristol Medieval

wth Professor Helen Fulton and Giles Darkes

The research project ‘Making Bristol Medieval’, funded by the University of Bristol, aims to re-position Bristol as a medieval city, bringing to light its architectural, topographical, and documentary legacies in ways that appeal to the city’s residents and its many tourists. One important outcome of the project has been the Map of Bristol in 1480, created by a team of local historians and archaeologists and published by the Historic Towns Trust.

In this lecture, project leader Professor Helen Fulton, explains the reasons why medieval Bristol was one of the most important cities in Britain in the late Middle Ages. Alongside her in this lecture, the Trust's Cartographic Editor Giles Darkes, cartographer for the map, discusses the challenges of capturing medieval Bristol in the form of a map.