Mapping Projects

London Customs Mapping Project

The Medieval London Customs Mapping Project was conducted in 2019-20 by four graduate students (Sally Gordon, David Howes, Camila Marcone, and Chrisite Olek) and their teacher (Maryanne Kowaleski) at Fordham University. They entered information from the London overseas customs accounts for 1445-6 (using the edition by Stuart Jenks) and 1480-1 (using the edition by H. S. Cobb, with corrections by Stuart Jenks) into a spreadsheet, concentrating on recording basic information about the ships, including the type of custom collected, the dates that ships entered or exited, shiptype, shipname, shipmaster, ship’s home port, the custom status of the merchants, and a summary of the cargo. Each student then chose to map some aspect of the geographical information provided by the ships’ home ports, using a spatial analysis platform called Carto.

Title and Link to Maps forthcoming

Fig. 5: Image of the cover of Tony Dyson, The Medieval London Waterfront (London: Museum of London, 1989).

Fig 6: Miniature of a view of London’s waterfront on the Thames with the watergate of the Tower of London and London Bridge in the background. British Library, Royal MS 16 F. ii, f. 73 (c. 1483, in Bruges).