The medieval March of Wales—a border region between England and Wales—has never been systematically mapped or studied as a distinct cultural zone, despite its multilingual population of Welsh, English, and French speakers between 1282 and 1550. This project will create the first holistic cultural history of the March, combining literary texts, manuscripts, and digital maps to reveal how language, identity, and power operated in this contested borderland. The problem is straightforward: historians know the March existed, but no one has authoritatively determined the boundaries of its lordships or documented the full network of readers, writers, and patrons who shaped its culture. Without this work, the region remains a blank spot in medieval British history—a place defined only by conflict with England, not by its own internal dynamics. If successful, MOWLIT will produce the first-ever set of maps of the Marcher lordships, linked to a prosopography of gentry houses and abbeys, showing where texts were produced and who owned them. This will give historians, linguists, and literary scholars unprecedented access to the cultural geography of the Welsh Marches. The project is fundamentally curiosity-driven—it seeks to understand a neglected region for its own sake—but its comparative workshops with scholars of other medieval European border communities could reshape how we think about regional and border identities that still underpin modern federated states in Britain and Europe.
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The project aims to create the first holistic cultural history of the medieval March of Wales, the borderlands between Wales and England, occupied by a diverse population of Welsh, English and French speakers in the period between 1282 and 1550. The main aims are (1) to uncover and analyse the literary texts and manuscripts produced and circulated in the medieval March; (2) to create an original series of digital maps of the Marcher lordships at various date points during the period; (3) to link the texts and the maps by means of a prosopography, a visualisation of the major gentry houses and abbeys, and a distribution of the texts/manuscripts across the maps showing where they were produced and who read/owned them; (4) to assess the cultural and regional identities of the March and its relations with its more powerful neighbour, England. MOWLIT will be the first systematic study of the geo-cultural politics of the March from both sides of the border, revealing new information about cultural and linguistic networks in this multilingual region of medieval Britain. This project will for the first time document and define a distinctive culture of the March, marked by multilingualism, conflict, emergent identities, and networks of readers and writers. It will also create the first-ever set of maps of the Marcher lordships, using historical records to determine the boundaries of the lordships which have never previously been authoritatively determined. A comparative dimension will be introduced through a series of workshops with scholars specialising in other border communities of medieval Europe, leading to new understandings of regional and border identities which underpin the histories of modern federated states in Britain and Europe. The resulting resources will provide historians, linguists, and literary critics with unprecedented access to the cultural geography of the Welsh Marches, opening up new avenues for comparative research and analysis.
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