Places

One might say that the REED London project is defined by the need to understand place and space. Not only is it crucial to understand the geographical boundaries of the project, but also to grapple with the challenge of researching place in time. While not a hard and fast rule, REED London focuses on the area within the Roman walls (called the City of London) and its environs (mainly) north of the Thames and west of the City -- Whitehall and Westminster.

In addition to geography, one of the main research endeavours for REED London since its inception has been to think critically about London as a place with over 2,000 of habitation and growth. While ultimately it is impossible to keep separate a modern from a medieval understanding of London, we attempt to think as much as possible about an imagined London before the Great Fire of 1666. Wherever possible we use historical maps from the 16th and 17th centuries, contemporary descriptions of buildings and pathways through the city, as well as the insights gained from archeological research projects.

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Because named places are slippery in terms of identifying exact locations, we have long emphasized the importance of thinking in terms of toponyms (literally 'place-names') rather than relying solely on geographical coordinates. 

As part of this ongoing research we have developed a gazetteer of all places referred to in the REED London legacy collections, worked with colleagues at REED to define place in London, and with fellow researchers in the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) project to understand the named places in the REED London records and to develop a vocabulary of Early Modern Place Types. 

Members of the REED London team, particularly Rachel Milio, have experimented with different tools to help visualize the gazetteer and place-based narratives, including ESRI's ArcGIS Online and Pelagios' Peripleo.