Neil Ker Memorial Fund 2025-26 Awards
The Neil Ker Memorial Fund 2025-26 awardees are:
Dr Gruffudd Antur Edwards
NK26\260056
Project Title: Welsh manuscripts in the USA: additions to Daniel Huws's Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes
University of Wales, Trinity St David
Value Awarded: £1,988.98
In 2022, Daniel Huws's long-awaited Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes c.800–c.1800 was published to widespread acclaim. The Repertory contains descriptions of all known pre-1800 Welsh manuscripts, over 3300 in total, together with bio-bibliographical entries for each scribe known by name, and over 1000 specimens of the various hands of the most important scribes. Since 2022, however, many 'new' manuscripts have come to light, manuscripts that had slipped the net, some of which are held by US institutions. This project is designed to make possible the consultation of some of these manuscripts, namely those held by Harvard University, Yale University and New York Public Library, so that summary descriptions of them may be included in the projected digital edition of the Repertory, which will be freely accessible to the general public.
Dr Will Eves
NK26\260038
Project Title: Plea Rolls of the Royal Courts, 1194-1250
University of Nottingham
Value Awarded: £1,989.70
The plea rolls of English the royal courts survive from 1194 onwards and are crucial to our understanding of the history and nature of the English common law. It is well-known that they contain extremely valuable information about the doctrinal development of English law, and equally important details that shed light on the social history of the period. However, the physical characteristics of these records and tangible evidence for how they were used in court processes have been less studied. This question is highly important, as relates to the development of a written rather than oral legal culture, the practical use of documentation in the early common law, and the increasing bureaucratisation of legal practice. This project examines the materiality and evidence of use of these records, considering how their design may have shaped legal practice. Its outputs will also make use of these documents by researchers much easier.
Professor Monika Opalińska
Co-applicant: Dr Thijs Porck
NK26\260026
Project Title: The N-Psalter project: reconstructing an eleventh-century glossed manuscript from fragments
University of Warsaw
Value Awarded: £500.00
This project aims to reconstruct and better understand the N-Psalter, an 11th-century English manuscript of the Latin Psalms with interlinear Old English glosses. Although the manuscript no longer survives in its original form, several of its pages - reused around 1600 as bookbinding material - have been preserved in fragments now scattered across a number of European libraries. Using high-quality digital images, we will recreate the folios by virtually arranging the surviving fragments to visualize the original layout and demonstrate the proportions of preserved and missing text. In addition, we will compile a comprehensive Latin–Old English glossary including the text from the earlier known fragments and the recently found ones. The results will be presented in an edited volume that will also contain the first consecutive critical text edition of all known fragments and contextual chapters addressing philological, linguistic, palaeographical, codicological, historical and material aspects of the N-Psalter.
Dr Matthew Payne
NK26\260060
Project Title: The Medieval Manuscripts of Westminster Abbey: two continental survivals
Independent Scholar
Value Awarded: £980.00
In the 16th century almost the entire library and liturgical manuscripts of the monastic Westminster Abbey were either destroyed or dispersed. A number of survivals can be identified in collections in the UK and beyond. In addition, two such survivals can be found among collections in Bordeaux and Pamplona. The former is a work of Westminster Abbey’s most distinguished monk/scholar, Fr William Sudbury. It is a concordance drawn up by him in the late 14th century of the work of Jacobus de Voragine, the 13th century author of the Golden Legend. The second is a manuscript of coronation and funeral orders, compiled in the 15th century, which parallels two other copies of the Liber Regalis, one still at Westminster Abbey (MS 38) and one at the British Library (BL, Add MS 38521). This project will examine both manuscripts and set them within their context among other known Westminster manuscripts.
Dr Oisín Plumb
NK26\260025
Project Title: The Macrobian orcades: A view from Britain
University of the Highlands and Islands
Value Awarded: £1,985.90
This research examines the depiction of the 'Orcades' in ‘Macrobian’ zonal maps, within manuscripts with insular connections. These depict the climatic zones of the earth outlined in Macrobius’s c. AD 430 commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio. A significant number, including 13 of the 35 surviving pre-1100 Macrobian zonal maps, include the 'Orcades', usually as one of only two named places in Europe (the other being 'Italia'), reflecting a cosmological vision of the Orcades as the earth’s outmost inhabited location - an abstract cosmological idea rather than a tangible place. Variations include the number of islands shown, their placement within the climatic zones and their relationship to other places. This study will assess how proximity to the Northern Isles of Scotland, and a corresponding knowledge of them as real and tangible places, have influenced the production of visual depictions within a cosmological tradition which shaped the worldview of medieval Europe.
Professor Kathryn Rudy
NK26\260045
Project Title: Why import books of hours to England?
University of St Andrews
Value Awarded: £2,000.00
Why did English buyers acquire such large numbers of books of hours from Flanders between ca. 1390 and 1520, when English parchmenters, scribes, and illuminators could have supplied the same market? I address this question through a comparative codicological study of production, use, and later circulation by interrogating a database of 665 English-made and imported books of hours, which records their place of origin, date, quire structure, script, decoration, size, parchment quality, degree of personalisation, palette, and signs of wear. Using structured data will allow comparison of the English-made and the Flemish-made manuscripts, and to identify what material and structural advantages imported books offered. The project then examines how these books were handled, modified, and circulated after acquisition, extending the analysis into the twentieth century by asking why Flemish books of hours behave as volatile art commodities in modern sales records, while English-made books tend to stabilise as heritage objects.
Professor Lisa-Marie Shillito
Co-applicant: Mr Anthony King
NK26\260029
Project Title: Recovering medieval bindings: Non-invasive imaging of medieval binding structures beneath 19th century rebindings from Durham Priority Library
Durham University
Value Awarded: £1,905.80
Durham Priory was a major centre of manuscript production across the medieval period with >350 examples remaining in the city where they continue to inspire scholars. Unfortunately, few of these manuscripts possess overt evidence of early bindings following a comprehensive rebinding campaign in the 19th century. It is highly likely, however, that elements of medieval bindings remain within some of these 19th century reworkings. This project will employ innovative non-destructive imaging to reveal hidden features by creating detailed 3D cross-section models and capturing minute surface features from underlying medieval elements. These techniques will enable a fuller understanding of the concealed medieval fabric and offer a unique window into the development of book technology and the communities that made them. We will establish the extent of surviving medieval bindings, record their characteristics, and demonstrate the value of these technologies for revolutionising current understanding of the early structures of rebound medieval books.
Dr Malcolm White
NK26\260028
Project Title: Surveying 'Brut' Manuscript Catchwords in Libraries of the British Isles.
Independent Scholar
Value Awarded: £2,000.00
The proposed research is a survey of catchwords in all 147 manuscripts of the English ‘Brut’ preserved in 30 archives across the British Isles. Before page numbers were common, catchwords (the final words added to a quire matching the first words of the next) were the usual way to correctly order unbound quires. This research will significantly expand and enrich a long-term project gathering a mass of bibliographical data about catchwords, aiming to provide empirical answers for questions such as how frequently were catchwords inserted in manuscripts? Why were so many of them decorated beyond what efficiency required? With no definitive factual information, scholars can only surmise about questions like these, including Neil Ker who opined: ‘I presume that nearly all later [post-12 century] manuscripts had them [catchwords] and their apparent absence in some is because a binder has cut them off.’ (‘Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries’, Preface, p. x).
Dr Amy Williamson
NK26\260040
Project Title: Networks of Preservation and Transformation: The Afterlives of Medieval Music Manuscripts in Post-Reformation England
University of Southampton
Value Awarded: £1,851.90
This project explores the afterlives of medieval music manuscripts and their preservation and transformation in Renaissance England. It centres on a printed book (1569) with manuscript flyleaves (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Wood 591) tracing ownership to Henry Ferrers, an antiquary linked to the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries. By consulting Ferrers’ personal papers and other sources of medieval music associated with him and his circle, the project investigates how antiquaries acquired and used fragments of medieval music when Latin liturgical material was religiously sensitive, and sometimes dangerous to own. While early antiquaries acted as preservers of the past, this study shows they also played a role in manuscript transformation – dismantling books, recycling leaves, and reshaping sources according to early modern tastes. These fragments are witnesses to both medieval music and post-Reformation England. This project asks if their survival was accidental or they held cultural, historical, or religious meaning for their collectors.
Please note: Awards are arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient. The institution is that given at the time of application.