This week Lancaster History PhD students Louis Pulford and Jenny McHugh travelled to the National Archives (TNA) in London to attend a Medieval and Early-Modern archival skills and methodology training course (Postgraduate Archival Skills Training, or PAST). The course, which spanned over two days, held multiple workshops on different types of medieval and early-modern records, demonstrating with TNA’s own records the diverse information which can be gleaned from these sources.

The materials that Louis and Jenny were able to handle included a thirteenth-century land deed to the canons of Holy Trinity Exeter, a fifteenth-century court case (in which the defendant supposedly turned invisible using a ‘hand of glory’ and other ‘wizardry’), and a financial record from the English Civil War paying for over three hundred hogsheads of beer!

Under the guidance of TNA’s archivists, Louis and Jenny were able to interpret and translate these sources and understand the diplomatic of the text (a technique for analysing medieval documents). The workshops also gave useful overviews of the inner workings of royal government, how the history of the archives themselves have affected the provenance of certain records, and how to find those materials previously neglected by historians.

All in all, the event was highly informative and hopefully our PhD students will put this information to good use in their own research. Huge thanks to the National Archives PAST team for organising the event and for lending their expertise.

For more information about the PAST workshops, see TNA’s website.