Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> William Worcestre was born in Bristol in 1415. For much of his life he worked as secretary and land-agent to Sir John Fastolf. In his work he travelled widely and kept diaries and notes of his travels written in lively and most un-classical Latin occasionally lapsing into English. In retirement he made a visit to Bristol in 1480 and compiled notes of a kind completely new to England at that time: a descriptive survey of his home town. He described Bristol in detail its streets lanes quays churches and other buildings. He measured distances and the size of buildings usually by counting his own “steppys”. He interviewed stone masons working on building Bristol churches the porter at Bristol castle a local hermit a ferryman and a young black- smith who had climbed the cliffs of the Avon Gorge. William Worcestre’s remarkable Bristol notebook has hitherto been little used because his hasty notes mostly written on the spot are very difficult to read. Early printed versions are still in Latin and are full of errors. Bristol Record Society now publishes a complete modern text and translation of Worcestre’s Bristol notebook making readily available for the first time this vivid description of Bristol in 1480. This volume includes the original text and a complete translation. It has been transcribed translated and edited by Frances Neale who is the archivist at Wells Cathedral. (SP)