Beacons for biodiversity: Green spaces and medieval places

Investigating ‘green health’ by exploring medieval health practices and their relationships to plants and gardens is step-change for medieval interdisciplinary research across Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England.

The healing knowledge and plant relationships of medieval people is to be revealed in a major new research project, bringing together expertise in archaeology, botany and history, with national heritage partners from the four devolved nations and the Republic of Ireland.

'Medieval Green Lives: exploring material health practices and human-plant relations in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England 1100-1600 AD' is an exciting new strand of research, spanning archaeology, heritage, botany and history. It champions ‘green heritage’, by spotlighting under-appreciated plant relicts and emphasises the importance of green space both now and in the past

The project seeks to demonstrate how medieval heritage sites can become beacons for biodiversity which responds to our understandings of green space for both wellbeing and health as well as tourism through collaboration with organisations including Cadw (the historic environment service for the Welsh Government), Amgueddfa Cymru Museum Wales, The Heritage Council of Ireland and Transport Infrastructure Ireland.

Archaeologist and principal investigator Dr Karen Dempsey leads a team of researchers and project partnerswho will undertake the initial4-year project funded by UK Research and Innovation’s prestigious Future Leaders Fellowship.

Bringing together social and scientific archaeology, history and botany, this humanities-led project examines 40 case-study sites from the Atlantic Isles of Ireland and Britain, all sharing common pasts evident in buildings to plants and documents, while retaining distinct regional differences.

Pinpointing place, people, plants and practice, a multidisciplinary team will investigate just how and why medieval people engaged with gardens and plants in the maintenance of health in later medieval Britain and Ireland, from everyday living in ordinary homes to life in religious houses and castles.

4 objectives in 4 years

• Place - Establish if the spatial arrangement of green spaces and gardens within different aristocratic, religious and ordinary households across medieval Britain and Ireland shaped practices of health and gender

• People - Reveal if particular forms of material culture and different historical sources related to uses of plants shaped practices of health and gender

• Plants - Explore the value of plants as markers for medieval health and garden practices

• Practice - Realign contemporary heritage practice, creating an engaging outreach programme with project partners to better appreciate green heritage and medieval health practices

The University’s first Humanities scholar to gain Future Leader Fellows status, Dr Karen Dempsey typically focuses on daily life of people, in particular women in the medieval past in her work.

Dr Dempsey explains the new take: “Green health and wellness may sound like 21st-century ideas; but medieval people believed strongly that having access to gardens and plants was an essential part of taking care of themselves and others.

"With its new emphasis on green history, Medieval Green Lives aims to be a step-change in how we approach the medieval past and model our future. Harnessing the power of humanities for public good, this novel research will deliver lasting impact by transforming the presentation and conservation of medieval heritage sites to generate long-term social and environmental benefits.”

She shares her desire for great emphasis on care of things past and present: “Through the new frame of green history, we intend to transform the discipline's previous economic approach to one centred on health, care and gender, drawing on expertise in medieval architecture, heritage, gender studies, and garden history with experts in botany, medieval archaeology and history, making archaeology’s relevance to wider society more apparent.

"My green history approaches the medieval world by exploring its biodiversity and heritage legacies. With greater focus on relict plants and green spaces, heritage sites can become spaces of refuge for flora and fauna as well as green spaces of wellbeing, just as they were in the medieval period.”

Dr Dempsey is keen is explain that this project’s strength is rooted in the multidisciplinary approach and collaborative nature of its team which is ‘feminist practice in action.’

On the team alongside Dr Dempsey are historian Dr Rebecca Thomas who specialises in the history, culture and literature of medieval Wales at the School, artist Paul Evans tasked with delivery of a multi-generational, multi-sensory outreach strategy and numerous specialists from project partners Cadw, Amgueddfa Cymru Museum Wales, Transport Infrastructure Ireland and Heritage Council of Ireland, Caring for God’s Acre and the conservation section of the Church of England.

Over its 4-year span, the project will also nurture early career researchers (PHD and postdoctoral scholars) at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion.