King Edgar,Wales and Chester: The Welsh Dimension in the Ceremony of 973

Abstract

This article addresses two related aspects of King Edgar's visit to Chester — why he went there and how he got there. Interpretations of its purpose have generally been based upon English sources and have paid less attention to Welsh evidence: this article attempts an alternative perspective. The first of the two aspects is a stage in the development of the ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’ expressed in the coronation at Bath and a tenth-century durbar at Chester when the might of the King of all England was pronounced to the outside world. The second, which was linked to that and specifically directed at the North-West, was a determined attempt to define and strengthen the north-western frontier of the extended kingdom and tighten Edgar's grip upon the northern Welsh princes whose constant infighting presented an opportunity for Norse and/or Irish incursions. His actions became an economic as well as a military necessity, to maintain the English grasp on North Wales and to protect the important trading links between Chester and Ireland.     

General Meeting,March 9th, 1849

Abstract

Salisbury Cathedral's cloister has received less scholarly attention than it merits. An important and outstanding issue is that of the structure's date. This has never been securely established, and there is no scholarly consensus on the matter. With reference to documentary and archaeological evidence, this article establishes unequivocally a documented start-date of after 15 June 1263 for the second stage of the project. In so doing it confirms the opinion of Pamela Blum, and corrects mistakes in her article of 1991 on the sequence of the 13th-century building campaigns at Salisbury.     

The development of a scientific understanding of synesthesia from early case studies (1849-1873)

The first case of synesthesia was reported in 1812 ( Jewanski, Day, & Ward, 2009 ). However, it took almost seven decades before the idea of synesthesia entered the mainstream of science and, subsequently, art. There are no known new cases described between 1812 and 1848, but in the following three decades there are at least 11 reported cases of synesthesia and many reviews of these cases. This comes at an important period in the history of the neurosciences, and for sensory physiology in particular. However, the literature that describes synesthesia during this period is largely unknown to contemporary researchers and historians. The aim of this review is to discuss the reports of synesthesia during this period, providing translations of some key passages, and to place these reports within the contextual framework of nineteenth-century neuroscience.